Son of Hestia
by Evyn Caryll
Summary: Fake identities. False leads. Curses and blessings. A heritage spurned. On his quest to find the mother who abandoned him seventeen years ago, James will discover a world within the world he thought he knew. The Greek gods are real, and they're out to get him.
1. Chapter 1

As far back as I can remember, every time I got into trouble with Miles he never hit me, no matter how much I thought I deserved it. He never raged at me, even when I would've called myself an idiot and only been telling the truth. There was never a furious "What were you thinking?" let alone the familiar "Wow, James, just how stupid are you?" that I get more than enough of from guys at school anyway. Miles was above all that.

Instead of feeling angry at me, he felt the anger I kept inside and couldn't get rid of. He felt hurt for my hurt. And for a moment, he would die inside as he felt the waves of my pain and rage, the uncontrollable anger that I had tried and failed to control. And he would shake his head, and his shoulders would slump forwards just a little, as if he thought he had just failed me, instead of the other way around.

We'd both sit quietly for some time and look down instead of at each other.

In the silence, I always knew what Miles would end up saying when he could speak again. I would say it to myself again and again in my mind. It was the same thing every time, and he'd always say it the same way, his seeming quiet calmness betrayed only as his voice broke and cracked. Whenever he said it, his grey eyes looked like they could bore holes in me but were too tired to try.

"Self-destruction is not an option when there're people who need you, James." The slight break in his voice drove the words home for him, few as they were. Miles didn't use words he didn't need. Then he would slowly stand and leave me alone. He never raised a hand to me. He knew there was no point in it. That one sentence was enough, and more than enough. The heavy pain in Miles' eyes as he left was far worse than a kick in the pants for making me feel just awful.

I just read over what I've written so far, and I realize that this is a confusing beginning to my story. Sorry about that.

But you'll see that I had to write about Miles first. I wouldn't know any of what had happened to me it if he didn't finally tell me after seventeen years of keeping it to himself. And that day I made him break a promise. I would have never known who I really am if Miles hadn't broken the only promise he'd ever made to my mom—the promise that he would never tell me who she was and why she gave away her baby.


	2. Chapter 2

I remember that the day everything fell apart started out like any other.

The ear-splitting wail of the alarm clock in Miles' office woke me up at 5:30 a.m. and I groaned as I sat up in my sleeping bag. I could see Miles' faint outline in the sleeping bag on the other side of the room, and I smiled at the way he could sleep through any noise. I stood and tiptoed my way past the short stacks of papers that Miles had arranged around his side of the room, and lifted our empty mugs from his cluttered desk. It was time to make coffee.

Our morning ritual was always coffee together before I left for school. Ever since Miles and I moved out from Georgia to New York City for his work, we'd had to scrimp and pinch wherever we could to make ends meet. We lived out of Miles' tiny law office in Manhattan, hiding the sleeping bags inside the closet during business hours. Coffee in the mornings seemed to be Miles' way of reminding me that we could still feel at home in New York, even if only for a few minutes each day.

I filled our mugs from the sink in the adjoining bathroom, and then placed them inside the microwave on Miles' desk, setting the timer for two minutes. During the day, the microwave was kept under the desk and out of sight; but at the moment, it was mine to command. I took the sack of ground coffee from inside the desk's top drawer and inhaled deeply, savoring the aroma of the rich, dark powder. Coffee was, and still is, the best-smelling substance I know.

As soon as the microwave's timer dinged, I removed the mugs and measured a level spoonful of ground coffee into each one. We never used coffee filters; since neither of us much minded a few coffee grounds, a little extra caffeine at the bottom of our mugs. Looking back on it, I don't know how I would have survived a day of high school without my morning jolt of caffeine-induced energy.

Miles woke up then, as always, to the smell of coffee. He blinked the sleep from his tired eyes and smiled at me before fumbling around his sleeping bag for his glasses. I smiled back in amusement.

"They're on your other side," I told him, "Right next to the amicus brief you were highlighting last night."

He nodded his thanks as he found his thick, black-framed glasses, and then placed them carefully on his face. Then he peered intently into my face.

"Ah, now I can see you. Good grief, James, you must've had an interesting dream."

"Why's that?" I asked as I handed him his mug and sat down cross-legged next to his sleeping bag.

"Your hair", he answered with a half-smile, "Your hair seems to have been battling dragons all night long."

He reached out with his free hand and absently ruffled my unruly brown mop.

"There", he nodded, satisfied.

"That neatened it up?" I asked with a grin, which he returned.

"Not at all. I merely distributed the mess a little more evenly."

"Sounds about normal, then", I sighed, resigned to my fate.

I had given up on my hair a long time ago. As long as I could cover it with a hat, I looked decent enough for school. It wasn't like girls were going to look at me twice anyway.

Miles raised an eyebrow at me in amusement, and then cupped both hands around his mug to warm them. He sighed as he sipped his coffee, closing his eyes to savor it and letting his shoulders drop as he relaxed. If I loved coffee, he worshipped it. I sipped some of my own and let him lose himself in silence for a few minutes, enjoying his company without really realizing it at the time. I never felt like I needed to say anything around Miles.

He looked up from his half-drained mug with a more focused gleam in his grey eyes.

"Good coffee, this", he nodded approvingly.

I shrugged. He said it every morning, and would probably say it if I handed him a mug of coal tar one morning instead of coffee. When you drink the stuff black the way Miles does, I doubt there's any real difference in flavor between the two. Approving the coffee was just his way of signaling that he was now awake enough for conversation.

"So how late are you opening, Miles?" I asked.

Most days Miles kept office hours until 6:00 p.m. so that we could have dinner together, but he was in the middle of a big case, which usually meant interviewing a lot of witnesses, which usually meant closing shop at 7:00 or later.

"Not too late", he reassured me. "It's a big case, but a pretty straightforward one. The press will have a field day with this one either way it's decided; but thankfully, we have our ways to avoid them."

He grinned mischievously at me, his dark brows dancing on his pale face. I grinned back, knowing that Miles was nowhere near famous enough as a lawyer to gain the attention of reporters. He knew it too, but he found a certain wry humor in it.

He gazed at the empty coffee mug in his hands wistfully, and then stood up reluctantly from his warm sleeping bag.

"So what are your plans for today, James?" he asked in a more business-like tone.

I stood up with him and grimaced as I envisioned the day ahead at school. It was only February, but I'd been ready for the school year to end since Christmas.

"The usual", I answered. "Sit through class and take the dumb quizzes to prove I actually know stuff, then get pounded by the jocks because I make them look bad by actually knowing stuff, then go change into my janitor's uniform and muck around in a job where I don't need to use the stuff I actually know."

Miles had patiently listened to my complaining tirade, his left eyebrow raising a little. I was pretty good at complaining, and he was pretty good at listening.

He took my empty mug as he shook his head at me.

"James, James, James. You do have quite a cynical view of the world for your age."

"I'm seventeen, Miles", I countered, "Old enough to know that it's ugly out there, and young enough to be allowed to complain without doing anything to fix it."

He fastened those grey eyes onto mine, amused but with a wariness behind them. Seeing the dark circles under them, harsh in the pale light of a winter morning, I remembered how hard he had it and how little he complained. I looked away and firmed my lip. If he could get through it, I could get through it. At least for today.

I threw on some jeans over my shorts and reached for my backpack from where it lay by the door. Miles' black windbreaker was draped across it, so I picked it up and put it on. Due to a recent growth spurt, I had outgrown the arms on my own jacket a couple of weeks back, and it seemed kind of pointless to get a new one when Miles apparently didn't mind his being on permanent loan.

"See ya, Miles", I called back towards him as I opened the door.


	3. Chapter 3

Grantham Lab School is, for lack of a better word, experimental. And by that I mean that the university people who set it up are so open to suggestions on how to run the place that they'll try just about anything as long as it sounds like it hasn't been done before. It's mental.

Just about the only positive thing about the lab school is that it's free. Not many lab schools are these days. In return for being studied and psychoanalyzed by frenzied student-teachers and their professors, students get access to the university's resources and some college-level classes for free. That's the kind of deal Miles couldn't pass up when we moved to New York.

The noise of a New York morning no longer overwhelmed me the way it had just a few months ago. I made my way around the ever hopeful gangs of half-tame pigeons that fixated on passerby with beady eyes, watching for any sign of a handout as I walked the ten blocks from the law office to school at a brisk pace. No use in delaying the inevitable.

As I neared the drab, beige building, I saw her sitting on the edge of the low wall surrounding it; her dark hair covering her face as she bent over the notebook she was writing in, her olive-green army jacket flapping in the wind. She had been there every morning since the beginning of the school year, and I still hadn't worked up the nerve to talk to her. She always looked so focused on what she was writing that I hated the thought of disturbing her solitude. That and I've never been able to talk to girls without sounding like an idiot. Which is really not the kind of first impression that a guy wants to make.

This morning, though, she looked up as I passed in front of her on my way to the door. Startled, I glanced back and gave a nervous half-nod. I would have gone on my way, but she opened her mouth and stopped me dead in my tracks.

"James Morgan?" she asked in the confident tone of someone who already knows the answer but is making sure anyway.

"Yeah, that's me," I confirmed, wondering how she knew my name.

"So he wasn't lying after all", she said, more to herself than to me.

"Excuse me, who?" I asked her, puzzled. Why would anyone mention a nobody like me to her, and more importantly, why would she assume they told her a lie? I wasn't worth lying about.

She stood up from her place on the wall, notebook in hand, and looked me over again, critically this time. I recoiled from her piercing gaze, instantly uncomfortable.

"So who told you—" I began, but she cut me off.

"Later, James. I promise I'll explain. But for now—" she paused as she checked the ancient-looking watch on her hand, then continued.

"For now the important thing is that I've found you. You have trig in about 3 minutes, but we can talk here afterwards."

I stared at her incredulously. She knew my class schedule too? Who was this girl?

Before I could ask her if we'd met, she brushed past me and began making her way quickly towards the door as if we'd never exchanged words. I sprinted after her and caught up before she could lose herself in the milling throng of students pushing their way through the door.

"Could I at least know the name of the person I'll be talking to?" I asked, looking down into her darkly flashing eyes.

"I suppose that's only fair since I know yours", she replied. "Kithara Kazantzakis."

She grinned at what must have been a confused look on my face. I wasn't expecting so many syllables.

"Lucky for you, I go by Kira."

"Lucky for me, indeed", I agreed. Knowing her name made her less unapproachable. I still had plenty of questions, but they could wait until after class. Which was just as well, since she had faded into the crowd so suddenly that I could almost believe our conversation had never happened.

I made my way through the hallway into the trig classroom with a slight sense of uneasiness building inside me. Several times, I had to resist the urge to look over my shoulder to see if anyone was following me. Not that it would have done any good. I got the feeling that if Kira had wanted to track me, she would be stealthy enough to do it virtually undetected. Something about that girl intimidated me.

As I sat down in my usual seat at the back of the room, I glanced up at the whiteboard and groaned inside. "Psych Ev Day!" was scrawled across it in all caps. I could feel myself dying inside. Psychological Evaluation Day happened every few weeks at the lab school, a time where students were required to use up a class period filling out a detailed mental health survey for "university research purposes". Since most students treated the whole process like a massive joke, though, I'm not sure how much the forms actually contributed to that research.

I looked down at the thick stack of stapled paper on my desk and sighed. What a monumental waste of time.

Just then, a thump on the shoulder made me look up, annoyed. I was met by the grinning face of my friend Alex as he stumbled over me to his seat. His blond hair was in disarray, his blue eyes looked bloodshot and were framed with dark rings, and his glasses were crooked. The oversized leather jacket that he always wore looked like he'd slept in it, and his shoelaces were untied.

"You look terrible today", I greeted him.

"Well, aren't you cheerful this morning?" he asked, shaking his head as he sat down next to me and deposited his belongings. He shoved his violin case under the desk with one hand while steadying a Styrofoam cup of coffee with the other. Judging from the slight shaking of his hands as he did so, it was not his first cup of coffee.

Glancing down at the thick form on his desk, he excitedly made a fist and punched the air with it.

"Alright! Another Psych Ev Day right when I need it most!"

I shook my head at him.

"You didn't do the homework last night, did you?"

"Ask me no questions, James, and I'll tell you no lies", he replied, holding a finger over his lips.

Alex scrawled something illegible that only slightly resembled his name on the front of his form, and then flipped the page. He stared at it for a few seconds, then gave up and looked up at me in disgust.

"What's the first question say?"

I flipped the page of my own form to locate the question. Alex was dyslexic, and while he could usually puzzle words out by himself if he stared long enough, there were times when he couldn't, or was just too lazy to try. During those times, he'd pester me into reading for him.

"It says, 'Describe your current mental state'", I told him, resigned to my fate.

He gave an elaborate shrug of his shoulders.

"Heck, how should I know? Let's see…Generally normal, slightly unstable, perhaps?"

"And the Atlantic Ocean is slightly wet, perhaps", I answered, smirking.

"Shut up, James", he muttered, as he scribbled something on his paper in letters an inch tall. He started on the second question by himself, deliberately turning his paper away from me to indicate how displeased with me he was. An eternal optimist, however, Alex could never stay pissed off for long, and it took only a few minutes before he was humming under his breath and drumming on the table with his free hand, unaware of what he was doing.

I remember how the humming and drumming had used to annoy me when I first met Alex. Now it seemed natural, like an extension of his personality. On days when he was absent, I had noticed that the room now felt a little too quiet. Alex had sized me up on the first day of school and decided we were friends. Although at the time I was inclined to mistrust this quirky blond kid whose nervous energy could probably power all of Manhattan if properly harnessed, he was relentless, going out of his way to talk to me in the halls and sit with me at lunch. He treated me like we were old friends until, a few months later; I realized that we sort of were. Funny how that happened.

After a while, our personalities seemed to bleed into each other. I started to listen to some of the classical music that Alex was always ranting and raving about. Alex started drinking coffee. Both of us were pleased with our discoveries. It was around then that I started reading for him. Neither of us had planned it. One day in class he was struggling and almost in tears with a worksheet that we had been assigned. When I read a question to myself aloud under my breath to make sure I understood it, he almost whispered, "Say that again." And that was how it started.

I turned to my paper and wrote something down without really processing the second question. Looking up at the clock, I glumly realized that only six minutes had gone by since Kira had vanished into the crowd. I noticed that I could no longer hear the scratching of Alex's pencil next to me. I looked over at him to find him intently staring back at me, as if he had been studying me for some time.

"What?" I asked him. I was careful not to reveal too much in my face, since Alex had an uncanny ability to read expressions.

"Oh, nothing", he answered, "it's just that you've managed to look at the clock five times in the last two minutes, and you usually have the ability to sit completely still, but today you're fidgety. That and you're blushing."

"I'm not blushing", I informed him, even as I felt my face grow warm.

He grinned at me, his annoying know-it-all smile.

"What's her name, James?" he asked in a sing-song voice that grated on my nerves.

"Shut up. Just shut up", I muttered, turning back to my mental health form. Silently, I promised myself not to look up at the clock for the remainder of the class period. Alex could be a real pain sometimes.


	4. Chapter 4

As soon as class let out, I hurriedly gathered my things together and began to make my way outside, not stopping to wait for Alex. I had hoped that he would take the hint and leave me alone, but the sound of footsteps behind me told me that I had hoped for too much.

"Stop following me, Alex", I called out without turning around.

"Following you?" he asked indignantly, "When would I ever do that? Going outside for a breath of fresh air, however, just at the same time you happen to be leaving, is another matter altogether."

He caught up with me and flashed me his trademark cheeky grin.

"And besides, you might need a wingman for your little meeting, ay?" he added, nudging me with his elbow.

"It's not like that", I protested weakly.

He raised an eyebrow and gave me a skeptical look. I glared at him.

"You wouldn't mind if it were, though, would you, James?" he asked.

I chose not to answer him, lengthening my stride as we approached the bench where Kira had spoken to me. Alex broke into a half-jog to keep up. She was already sitting there, looking into the distance like she was thinking of something else. As soon as she saw Alex, however, her face broke into a scowl.

"Alex Callahan", she muttered through gritted teeth, standing to meet us. Her fists clenched menacingly, and I wondered what stupid thing Alex had done in the past to warrant that kind of wrath.

She glared at me as if I were somehow responsible for his being there.

"You didn't mention that _he_ was coming along", she accused me.

"I didn't know", I replied, "I didn't have any say in the matter. But what's it to you anyway if he decided to show up? What is it between you two?"

Alex's eyes were narrowed as he returned her glare. For once he stood completely still, clutching his violin case in both hands as if he hoped to use it as a weapon.

"Nothing that's any of my fault", he answered, still glaring at Kira.

"Typical Apollo kid", Kira spat out at him, "it's always somebody else's fault, isn't it?"

"Typical Hermes kid", he countered, "it's always time to talk yourself out of trouble, isn't it?"

"You're impossible."

"That makes two of us."

"You absolute—"

"Cut it out," I interrupted, "I didn't hurry out of class just to watch you two fight. Trust me; I'm not stupid enough to want something dangerous like that to happen."

And it was true. Even though they were both about my age or a little younger, hurling insults at each other like any high school kids anywhere, there was an odd gleam of power radiating from them, something barely tangible that sparked like electricity in the depths of their eyes. And then there were the unusual names they had called each other. What did a couple of ancient Greek gods have to do with anything?

"Fine", Kira answered, "but I'm not saying anything while he's here."

"And I'm not leaving", Alex countered.

I stared helplessly at the two of them, wondering desperately just what I'd gotten myself into. The seconds that passed seemed like hours as they continued to look daggers at each other. Finally I turned to Alex.

"Don't take this personally, but—"

He stared at me in disbelief.

"You're seriously taking her side?"

"I'm not taking anyone's side!" I protested. "I just wanted to—"

"Unbelievable", he interrupted, storming off towards the school building.

I looked at Kira and gulped.

"This better be good", I told her, with bravado I did not feel, "I just told off my best friend for you."

She nodded, then sat down on the bench and motioned me over next to her. I sat down cautiously. I felt as if I were sitting next to a ticking time bomb.

She took a deep breath.

"First of all, I'll just tell you now that you probably won't believe what I'm about to tell you."

"Why wouldn't I?"

She looked at me critically, as if weighing something in her head.

"What do you know about the Greek prophetess Cassandra?" she asked.

It was an unexpected question. I desperately racked my brain for information, wishing that I had paid more attention in English class.

"The Trojan War", I started, wondering what it had to do with anything. "She was this crazy prophetess who kept going on about doom and destruction, but nobody believed what she told them."

Kira nodded, and I felt like I'd passed some kind of test.

"Yet everything she told them was completely true", she continued, "And they would have believed her had she not been cursed by the god Apollo himself, just because she refused his advances. Cursed to always prophesy accurately, and to always be disbelieved."

I waited for her to make the connection between Cassandra and herself, but she seemed wrapped up in her own dismal thoughts.

"Gods are jerks", she muttered under her breath.

"You talk as if they're real", I said.

"What makes you think they're not?" she asked.

I stared at her uncomprehendingly. Was she serious?

"You can't really mean—"

"Why not?" she interrupted.

"Because it's impossible!"

"Is it?" The look in her eyes was a challenge, and even though I tried not to, I found myself convinced that she believed what she was saying.

"Hermes and Apollo", I blurted out without thinking about it, "You mean to tell me that you and Alex were referring to the Greek gods?"

Her face tightened and her eyes narrowed at the mention of Alex. She nodded.

"Yes", she said simply, "The children of Hermes and those of Apollo rarely get along. In fact, most children of the various Olympians tend to fight. "

I felt like my mind had exploded.

"Children of the gods?" I asked. "But how—"

"Think about it, James", she answered, "What were the gods always doing in the old myths?"

"Running around having kids with mortals", I admitted. "But they couldn't possibly be around after all those millennia, and even if they were, there's no way their kids could blend in with normal people."

I mustered together my hazy knowledge of Greek mythology.

"Those Greek heroes back in ancient times", I said, "They were always superhumanly strong or good-looking or something. A bunch of people like that and people would notice."

"And how did you feel when you saw Alex and me?" Kira answered.

I faltered, and there was silence between the two of us.

"Like you two were incredibly powerful somehow", I said at last, "it almost felt like there was electricity between you when you glared at each other."

She smiled to herself.

"You're more perceptive than I thought, James", she said.

I looked at her incredulously. I had no idea what to say.

"The curse of Cassandra", she continued, "Not being believed when you speak the truth. One of the more creative ways the gods have thought of over the years to torture humans. And they punished me with it."

"Why?" I asked, wondering what she could have done to anger the gods.

"Apparently I failed to show them honor when I was summoned to Mt. Olympus a couple years ago", she replied with a wry twist to her mouth. "I was furious, James. The gods, well, they've never paid much attention to their demigod children. My dad, Hermes, is pretty notorious for forgetting about his kids altogether, but it's not like the others are much better. We had just fought to reclaim Manhattan from the Titan Kronos. Some of the best demigods I've ever known died, and almost everyone was wounded somehow. And the gods pretty much did nothing to help. I just couldn't take it anymore. So I mouthed off in front of the entire Olympic council and basically told them what terrible parents they were. Although some of the kinder gods and goddesses, like Demeter, were inclined to let me off easy, Apollo wouldn't stand for it and cursed me in front of them all."

She paused, and I realized that her story was over. My mind was spinning with questions, but the faraway look in her eyes stopped me from blurting them out all at once. She sounded strangely detached from what she was saying, as if she was telling me something that had happened to someone else. Then I noticed the tightly clenched fists in her lap and knew how much self-control it had taken for her to tell me all of it without bursting into tears or, more likely for Kira, cursing up a storm.

"It must be hard for you", I murmured.

She shrugged.

"It's not as bad as you might think", she answered. "The first rule a Hermes kid learns is that there are loopholes. There are always loopholes. I've learned that the curse only works if I tell the absolute truth. So if I fudge a few details on purpose, or tell a white lie that's so close to the truth that people can generally figure it out for themselves, nothing happens."

She grinned.

"I might be the world's only honest pathological liar".

I laughed, admiring her nerve.

"I'll have to remember that", I told her, "There are always loopholes."

In the silence that followed, I could almost feel the gears turning in my head. With a nearly audible mental _click_ , I realized something.

"That's why Alex coming along with me pissed you off so much", I blurted. "Because his dad was the one who cursed you."

She shrugged.

"More or less. But between us, I'm pretty confident in Alex's ability to piss people off without much help from his dad."

I knew she was right, but part of me revolted inside at her attitude towards my best friend.

"He's not as bad as you seem to think", I told her, "And if you would just stop viewing him as a potential enemy and get to know him, you'd find that—

"Save it, James", she muttered, rolling her eyes. "Everyone's a potential enemy when you're a demigod. And believe me; we have more important things to discuss than my opinion of Alex Callahan."

"Such as?"

She took a deep breath, and then peered intently into my face.

"James, I think you might be a demigod."

"You can't be serious", I replied. In the electric intensity of her gaze, I was only too aware of how distressingly normal I felt.

"Well, I'm not certain", she admitted, "but that doesn't make me any less serious about the possibility."

Sensing my disbelief, she continued.

"First off, there's your friendship with Alex. Demigods can often recognize each other. Like, you won't realize it, but you subconsciously seek out the company of another demigod. And you can perceive the power that demigods have, which is not a skill that comes easily to mortals. Then there's the way you believed my story about the curse of Cassandra. You're either extremely gullible, James, or a part of you instinctively realized that it was true. And finally, I was told in a dream by my dad, Hermes, to 'seek out James Morgan, who is far more than he appears to be'".

I stared at her incredulously.

"You could've mentioned that first", I managed to say.

"And miss that stunned look on your face?" she answered with a grin. "Not a chance."

I shook my head to clear my thoughts.

"But this is impossible", I said. "My dad's name is Miles Morgan, he's a lawyer, and my mom died in a car accident when I was born. I can't even remember her face. There's no way I could be a demigod."

"What was her name?" Kira asked.

I racked my brain desperately.

"I…don't know", I admitted at last.

"Don't you think it's a bit odd that you don't know your own mother's name?" Kira continued pointed.

"No, I don't", I countered defensively, even though I did. "Not in this case. Miles hates talking about her; he's still really upset by what happened to her. So I've just learned not to ask him."

"I understand that", she said quietly. "But James, maybe now it's time you did ask him."

She paused.

"I can't be sure, but I have an idea who Miles Morgan is, and I'm pretty sure there's more to the story than he's letting on."

"Listen, Kira", I said, struggling to keep my voice level, "I don't know who you think Miles is, but whoever it is, he's not. I trust what he's told me, and I don't like whatever it is you're suggesting about him."

I got up to leave, my hands clenched into fists. Suddenly, an idea struck me that would silence her once and for all.

"In fact", I continued, "Miles is home right now, working away on a brief as we speak. Why don't we drop in on him and settle it all? I'm already late for my next class, anyway."

She rose from the bench and slung her bag over her shoulder.

"Why not?" she replied as she followed me out of the courtyard.


	5. Chapter 5

As soon as I walked through the door, I regretted bringing Kira to Miles' office.

Miles clearly had not been expecting any clients that day. His sleeping bag was still rumpled in a corner, and various papers were strewn all over the floor in haphazard piles. Miles himself was standing barefoot in a faded hoodie and pajama pants against the far wall, scrawling notes with a dry-erase marker on the window since we didn't have a whiteboard. His glasses were askew and his black hair was rumpled, as if he'd been running his hand through it while thinking.

He turned in surprise at the sound of the door opening.

"James? Is everything alright? I wasn't expecting you back so soon", he called out in a worried tone.

He looked at Kira quizzically.

"Selene?" he asked her. "No, no, it couldn't be. You must be her daughter. Lyra, isn't it?"

She shook her head.

"No, I'm Kira. You must be thinking of my sister."

I looked back and forth at the two of them incredulously.

"You two know each other?" I asked.

"In a manner of speaking", Miles replied as he put the marker down on the table and adjusted his glasses. "Which is to say, I know of her. Selene Kazantzakis, Kira's mother, is the agent who sold me this office. At an excellent price, I might add", he said, smiling at the recollection. "She mentioned that her younger daughter attended a lab school in the city, but I just never realized it was the same one you go to, James."

He turned to Kira and bowed his head apologetically.

"I'm sorry that you should find me like this", he told her, motioning to the room around him. "I'm afraid that the life of the average lawyer is perhaps less glamorous than most people are led to believe."

"Don't worry about it", Kira assured him. "I'm sure you're busy working on something important."

"Sadly, 'important' and 'interesting' don't seem to be the same thing in this case", Miles said with a smile. "You two coming in are the perfect excuse for me to take a short break."

He scooted some papers aside and motioned us over to the chairs around his desk.

"Coffee?" he asked us as he brushed more papers off of one chair.

Kira shook her head.

"No, that's alright", I answered, navigating my way through the piles of paper on the floor.

Once we were all seated, I took a deep breath, unsure of how to begin. Kira nodded at me encouragingly as Miles sat waiting, steepling his fingers as he looked at me with a half-smile on his face.

"Well," I began, "it's about Mom."

Instantly his cheerful expression crumbled and his eyes narrowed.

"I know you don't like talking about her", I continued hurriedly, "but I think it's time I knew a bit more about her." I swallowed. "I mean, honestly, Miles, I don't even know her name."

He said nothing, looking down at the tabletop for a few moments. Then he turned to Kira, and I was amazed by the hard, blazing fire in his gray eyes as he glared at her.

"What do you have to do with all this?" he asked in a dangerously quiet voice. "What have you been suggesting to him about me and his mother?"

"Only that he deserves to know the truth about her", she answered, resolutely meeting his eyes with a very similar look in her own.

"James", he said, looking at me intently, "You present me with an ethical dilemma. Either I break a promise, the only promise I ever made to your mother, and tell you who she was and what happened to her; or I keep information from you that you deserve to know as her son."

He paused and let his words sink in.

"I trust you understand the gravity of my situation", he continued, including us both in his gaze.

Neither of us could think of anything to say.

"Very well", he said, as if he had anticipated our silence.

He turned to me and sighed, shaking his head.

"I can only ask that you forgive me for not telling you earlier, James", he said. Then he told us the following story.


	6. Chapter 6

"Your mother's name was Stephanie Anne Ryland. We went to high school together, and she and I were the best of friends. I was head-over-heels in love with her, and would probably have done anything she asked, but she didn't ask for much. I could never work up the courage to tell her how I felt, though. She was too beautiful, too popular, too huge a part of my world to potentially lose with one awkward conversation—and she had a boyfriend who could probably kill me blindfolded if he had considered me worth that much of his time. Dane, I think his name was. Stephanie really loved him. I never said anything to her about it, but I hated Dane's guts. And no, it wasn't just jealousy. I'll admit that a lot of it was just that, but I watched the guy, James."

"Dane was the undisputed king of our high school because he knew how to act and who to be with each group of his friends. He was the kind of guy who'd be all sweet with his girlfriend so that he could get what he wanted from her, and he'd treat her like a princess when they were with her friends so they'd think he was this great guy—but I knew better than to fall for his act."

"He was the star quarterback on the football team where I was the manager. You can watch and learn all you like when you're the manager, because you're basically invisible to the team. When you wipe the dirt off a guy's shoes, you learn a lot about how he treats people below him. I was always grateful to the players who took the time to wipe their feet on the grass after a game before they handed me their shoes. Dane never did, and he didn't hand me his disgusting shoes either. I always had to find them myself, scattered somewhere in the locker room underneath all his other trash."

"It was the little things like that which made me pay more attention to him."

"I didn't have to pay too much attention to know that he was a jerk, though. All I had to do was listen to him run his mouth when he thought that no one but his team members could hear him, and the way he talked about Stephanie made me sick to my stomach. He bragged about what he did with her as if she were just some fancy call girl he picked up somewhere. He called her things he'd never say to her face—he made her sound like some stupid blonde that he was already tired of, but kept around just because he could. I'd hear all the crap he was spouting about her from where I knelt cleaning everyone's equipment, and my sponge felt the wrath that his face should have."

"I tried to tell Stephanie that Dane was trouble, but she wouldn't believe me. She didn't want to. She refused to speak to me for quite some time when I persisted in warning her. Not until Dane dumped her in his senior year, our junior year, of high school did she talk to me again; because she needed to talk to someone. She cried into my shoulder and I bit my lip and tried just to be there. What killed me was that she still loved him after the hell he gave her—she thought the breakup was somehow her fault. She thought she wasn't good enough for him. I told her he wasn't worth the dirt she walked on, and she smiled a little, but she didn't believe me."

"We lost touch after high school for a few years. I heard from friends that Stephanie was auditioning for the musical theatre program in a college in New York, and then that she had gotten in and was thriving there. My heart felt lighter when I got the news—she had moved on from Dane and seemed to be going strong. I felt that she didn't need me anymore, so I resigned myself to the distance and focused on my classes instead."

"I saw Stephanie maybe three times at most throughout our college years, and I regret to say that our conversation was limited to "what-have-you-been-up-to" stories over coffee. The last time we talked; she raved about how she had started dating some hot-shot psychologist guy who was a few years older than her, how he was totally different from Dane, and how she just knew he was "the one"—except for the fact that he wouldn't propose to her. From what she told me, and even more from what she left unsaid, I gathered that he was too smart for that. He just took whatever he could get from her, like Dane did years ago. I knew she was too much in love with him to listen to my misgivings; so instead I wished her the best, told her she could talk to me anytime about anything, and hugged her goodbye."

"I left with a bitter taste in my mouth."

"The next time I heard from Stephanie was at our ten-year high school reunion. I hadn't planned on going since I had a bar exam to study for—but hey, free food. So I went. To be honest, I planned to load my plate and sneak enough food for the week in my briefcase, then leave. High school held no fond memories for me apart from Stephanie, and she was touring in a stage production at the time, so I didn't think she'd be there."

"At the reunion, it was like high school all over again for one night. The popular kids, all grown up now, were still grouped together in the middle of the cafeteria, bragging and gossiping to each other in voices projected to carry so that others could hear them—trying their best to convince every person they talked to that life was pretty much perfect, as always. The football team members arrived in their old letter jackets and lived it up, reveling in the high-fives and fist bumps that their old friends showered on them, trading tales about the "glory days". I wove my way around them and filled my plate and briefcase at the food tables they had forgotten in their conversation. It was disgusting."

"My raiding completed, I nursed a plastic cup of punch and blended into the wall, just like I used to do at high school dances. It struck me then how easily I blend into walls. I was just getting ready to leave with my briefcase full of pilfered food when I saw her walk in."

"Stephanie had come after all."

"She arrived late, but as soon as she appeared in the door, I felt that everyone else had simply come early. She had changed since the last time I saw her. Her features were the same, but there was something in her stance, in the way she looked out at the people in the room. She held her head like a queen and her eyes seemed to take in everything at once. She was carrying a blue-blanketed bundle in her arms like it was the most precious thing in the world to her. And since the bundle contained you, I guess it was."

"She scanned the room, apparently looking for someone, so I walked towards her in hopes of helping her find whoever it was. But it turned out she had been looking for me.

"'Miles!' she exclaimed, her whole face lighting up into a smile, and then more quietly, 'I've missed you.'"

"And I said something stupid like 'Not as much as I've missed you'".

"Because I had never gotten over Stephanie. Sure, I had gone on a few dates in college, but I always found myself thinking of her when I was with other girls, which really wasn't fair to them. So I stopped asking girls out sophomore year, and I didn't go on a single date all through law school. Pathetic, I know."

"After I told her I'd missed her, Stephanie just looked at me for a moment as if she were seeing me for the first time and she wasn't sure she liked what she saw. But she regained her composure in an instant—she was an actress, after all. She asked me if I wanted to catch up somewhere a little more private, since her baby wasn't too happy with all the loud music that was playing. I said sure, that I'd been planning to leave soon anyway. She looked down at my bulging briefcase and quickly pieced together what was going on, but she just smiled and didn't say anything."

"We walked out of the cafeteria and down the hall into the band rehearsal room, which brought back a lot of memories for both of us. As soon as I flipped on the switch, I could see the old piano that I had played around on after school as Stephanie sang along. She had a gorgeous voice, clear and silvery with a slight lilt in it, as if she were caressing each word as she sang it. She had tried to get me to harmonize with her, and she would say how much she loved my voice too, but our attempts never quite sounded anywhere near as good to me as Stephanie on her own."

"She walked over to the piano bench and sat down, motioning me over next to her. So I joined her. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, I could see little things that the dim lighting in the cafeteria had obscured. The slight trembling of Stephanie's lip, the drop of her shoulders, the way she didn't brush her hair back when a lock fell over her face: they all made me feel vaguely uneasy."

"'Steph, is something the matter?' I asked like the idiot I was. Of course something was the matter. It was only a question of whether she trusted me enough to tell me what it was."

"She started to say something, but then shook her head, firming her lip. She gently pushed back the falling corner of the blue blanket in her lap a little so that your face showed more; and she smiled a little as you gazed up at her with huge, wondering eyes."

"'Isn't he a beautiful boy, Miles?'" she asked me in barely more than a whisper.

"I nodded in agreement."

"'Yes, he is'", I answered, 'He's got your eyes for sure; the shape, not the color'".

"She sighed and stroked the faint fuzz of your hair."

"'His father's eyes are that color'", she said without looking me in the face, 'Not green or brown or blue, but somewhere in between.'"

"I waited for her to say more, but she kept silent, gazing down at you for the longest time, as if she wanted to lock away every feature into her memory forever. You had been tired this whole time, and were beginning to fall asleep, so I didn't say anything for fear of upsetting you."

"When Stephanie finally looked up at me, I saw for the first time the fear in her eyes, the weariness in her pale face that even she couldn't hide, the faintly purple bruise on her cheek that not even her skillful makeup tricks could cover. And she saw that I saw."

"She turned her face away in shame, closing her eyes as if in dread of what she might see in mine."

"I placed a hand lightly on her arm, tried my best to put her at ease."

"'Steph, whatever needs to be said can be said to me', I reassured her in a fervent whisper, 'Anything at all, just like old times.'"

Her eyes opened uncertainly.

"Just like old times", she repeated as tears formed in their beautiful blue depths.

"'I always did come to you with my problems, didn't I, Miles?'" she asked in a trembling tone.

"I shrugged. She shook her head and continued."

"'It wasn't right, me always making you listen to my stories of heartbreak and tales of woe, while never bothering to listen to yours. I don't think I ever bothered talking to you unless something was wrong.'"

"'I really didn't mind', I answered. 'I was just glad that you still wanted to talk to me even though your boyfriend hated me.'"

"She looked at me reproachfully."

"'He didn't hate you—'"

"'You're right, he didn't', I cut her off, 'I wasn't important enough for him to hate me personally. He just liked making people's lives miserable when they couldn't do anything about it, and I happened to be a guy in his way who couldn't do anything about it.'"

"I regret my hurting her with my bitterness towards a guy she had loved, but I just couldn't stand her defending him to me ten years after they had broken up."

"She exhaled sharply and fixed her eyes onto mine."

"'I'm not going to argue with you, Miles'", she said in a strained voice, 'There'd be no point to it. But for old time's sake, I do have another tale of woe to bother you with.'"

"She paused, and looked down at your sleeping form thoughtfully. Her voice softened as she went on: 'This one, though, might have a happy ending.'"


	7. Chapter 7

Miles broke off, lost in recollection.

"What happened next?" I asked him. We had sat here for the better part of the afternoon as Miles told us about my mom, and now the shadows were beginning to fall.

"Stephanie asked me to take care of you", he said quietly, "She said it was no kind of life for a baby where she was headed, and that she didn't ever want her son to know what his mother had become. She wanted to go away, somewhere far from your father where she could start over and be someone else. She said she had already purchased the plane ticket, but she wouldn't tell me where she was going. Only that the ticket was one-way, and she wasn't intending to come back."

He sighed.

"So I agreed, although I told her that she had chosen just about the worst person in the world to care for a baby. What else could I do? She didn't have anyone else. We went to get your paperwork sorted out, so that my last name would end up on your documents. She had already named you 'James', after her father, and 'Ryland' as your middle name, for her maiden name. So she put down 'Morgan' for your last name, and made me your legal guardian. She gave you a final kiss, and right before she left she made me promise not to tell you anything about her. She didn't want you to go looking for her one day only to be disappointed with what you found."

"And I promised her", he continued in a choked-up voice. "And that was that."

I looked at him, stunned. How had he kept such a secret from me for seventeen years?

"I want you to know", Miles pressed on, with a fierce intensity in his voice, "that even though I'm not your real father, I have never thought of you as anything less than my son. I loved your mother, James, and her entrusting you to my care was the best thing that ever happened to me."

I felt a lump grow in my throat and blinked the tears from my eyes.

"As far as I'm concerned, Miles, you are my real father", I told him. "Just because some jerk got my mom pregnant doesn't make him my dad."

Miles took my hand and smiled sadly and said nothing. We stayed like that for a long time, and it was only when the room was wreathed in shadows that I realized that Kira was gone.

Miles noticed my bewildered expression as I looked around the room and laughed.

"Children of Hermes often have the ability to disappear unnoticed when they need to", he observed.

I stared at him, dumbfounded.

"You know about demigods?" I asked him.

"I should hope so", he replied, "And especially about children of Hermes. After all, I am one."

"You what?"

"You heard me."

Miles got up and started to close the window blinds, making sure not to smudge the notes he had scrawled on the window earlier.

"You can't just leave it at that!" I cried out indignantly. "You're, like, the most normal person I know, Miles! Not exactly typical child-of-the-gods material."

"A ringing endorsement", he muttered ironically. "But no, James, I'm afraid that most demigods don't seem to be typical child-of-the-gods material, as you term it. Kira's sister Lyra, for example. To look at her, you'd think she was just any other geeky college student, but that girl's hacking and lock picking skills are positively supernatural."

"Hacking and lock picking? Whatever happened to godly abilities like superhuman strength or insanely good looks or something?"

"Oh, they're still around", said Miles, dismissing them as useless with a wave of his hand. "But I'm sure you'd agree that hacking and lock picking are more useful in this day and age, and for children of Hermes at least, certainly more typical."

He flicked on a light switch and sat down across from me again.

"Hermes is the god of lawyers, you know, and of all who make a living by their wits", he told me. "Of course, he's also the god of liars and thieves, which probably explains a lot of what's wrong with the justice system."

I laughed as he gave a wry smile.

"So what are your godly abilities, Miles?" I ventured to ask him.

"Rhetorical persuasion and public speaking, for one. Hermes was a notorious negotiator, though according to one myth, he managed to literally bore someone to death just by talking to him. Hopefully I don't emulate him in that regard."

He paused as if he didn't especially like remembering his other abilities.

"My other gifts, I'm afraid, are not as useful in daily life. Hermes was known as Hermes Oneiropompus by some of his worshippers, literally 'Hermes, conductor of dreams'. I share that ability in that I can manipulate my dreams sometimes to gain pertinent information. Some of them are also prophetic, though many demigods seem to have that ability. And finally, Hermes was described as moving freely between the divine and the mortal realms, able to cross boundaries as the messenger of the gods. I can do the same, to some extent. There are many portals between this world and that of the gods."

He shuffled his feet, looking uncomfortable.

"I seem to be able to detect and use them quite well", he said under his breath.

"That's amazing!" I replied.

"Amazing, perhaps, but not very practical", he said. "After all, generally one wants to stay as far as possible from the gods, not get close to them. What I would give for some decent hacking and lock picking abilities instead."

"Miles!"

"I wouldn't use them! It would just be nice to know I could."

I shook my head at him but couldn't resist smiling. Somehow, it didn't really surprise me that Miles was the son of a god. He had always seemed to be different from other people, as if he were unconsciously holding himself apart from them, playing by a different set of rules.

Something he had said struck me as important.

"Miles, if you can travel between worlds, you can go to the Underworld, right?"

"Well, yes, though I don't see why I'd want to. I went once, years ago."

"Was my mom down there?"

He bit his lip and looked down.

"No, no she wasn't", he finally answered. "As far as I know, Stephanie's still alive somewhere on the other side of the world."

He looked at me and I was struck by the hopelessness in his eyes.

"Don't think I haven't tried looking for her, James", he told me. "I did, years ago, when you were too young to remember. She covered her tracks too well."

I vaguely remembered moving every few weeks back when I wasn't even in school yet, Miles being fueled by a curious sense of urgency. My heart sank.

Miles put his hand on my shoulder.

"Come on, James, it's getting late. Let's have dinner, shall we?"

"Later", I told him. "There's something I need to do first."


	8. Chapter 8

Alex lived about eight blocks away from Miles' office, on the top floor of a red-brick apartment building that had seen better days. I ran breathlessly up the seven flights of concrete steps, wishing for the thousandth time that his landlord would just go ahead and install an elevator already.

His mom opened the door on the third knock, greeting me with a tired smile.

"Alex is on the roof", she said before I could ask. "You know how it is when he needs some space to think."

There was no blame towards me in her voice, even though I'm sure she must have known all about what happened. I nodded my thanks and hurried up the stairwell to the roof.

I heard Alex before I saw him, the high strains of his violin playing a lilting melody that was carried by the wind. He was facing away from me, looking over the city skyline and swaying slightly as he played. The music was hauntingly beautiful, every note clear and sweet.

"The violin solo from Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Scheherazade'", I said as I approached him, recognizing the tune.

"Well done, James", he muttered sarcastically as he continued to play, not looking at me. "Kudos to you for recognizing one of the most popular Romantic pieces of all time."

"Listen, Alex, about this morning", I began.

He abruptly stopped playing and lowered his violin. His blue eyes flashed nearly gray in anger, like storm clouds.

"Is this the part of the conversation where you kind of begin to apologize but then end up making excuses for why you did what you did? Because I don't want to hear it, James."

"Alright then, no excuses. I was a jerk and I'm sorry", I told him all in one breath.

"Music to my ears."

He knelt down and gently placed his violin in its case, and then sat down on the edge of the roof, his legs hanging over the side of the building. I joined him tentatively, grateful that he was above holding petty grudges.

"So how'd it go?" he asked me, an impish smile building in the corner of his mouth.

I let out my breath in an exasperated sigh.

"For the last time, you doofus, it wasn't like that. She just wanted to ask me some stuff."

"Would that stuff involve the seven digits of your phone number?"

"Alex", I warned, glaring at him. I could just make out the white flash of his teeth as he grinned in the darkness. He was provoking me, but I decided to let it slide.

"No, actually, she was feeding me this crazy story about the Greek gods and about how they had kids with mortals, demigods she called them. And how she was one, and apparently, so are you."

He nodded.

"Yep. Alexander Callahan, son of Apollo. Nice to meet you."

"Apollo", I repeated wonderingly. "Wasn't he, like, the sun god or something?"

Alex snorted and swung his legs.

"What wasn't he the god of? Music, truth, prophecy, archery, light, healing, poetry, plague, and eventually the sun. What a guy."

I could hear the bitterness in his voice as he listed Apollo's many traits. I guessed that Alex didn't have the best relationship with his godly father.

"It's not as great as you might think", he told me, echoing my thoughts. "The gods generally tend to forget their kids unless they need our help. Like, sure, I may have some serious skills on the violin and I can glow in the dark, but what's the point when my dad is a cosmic jerk who's probably forgotten I exist by now?"

"You glow in the dark?"

Alex sighed and held out his hand towards me. His brow furrowed in concentration as his palm glowed with a faint golden light.

"Ta-da. Alex the human flashlight", he muttered. He clenched his fist and the light went out.

"I've gotten better at controlling it over the years", he continued. "Now I generally don't glow unless I want to. And it doesn't make me as tired as it used to either. Generally, I just get really thirsty if I light up for too long."

I stared at him incredulously, and then burst out laughing. It wasn't so much his unusual ability as it was the sheer buildup of everything that I'd had to process over the course of the day. If I didn't laugh, cry, or scream cathartically into the void; I would probably go insane. Alex started laughing too, his face creasing into a maze of lines and lopsided dimples. He had a strangled hiccup of a laugh that made his shoulders shake.

"Come on", he said, picking up his violin case, "I saw you shivering, you southern weakling. We're going inside."

I followed him down the stairs and into his apartment. His mom was sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop open and a mug of tea next to her. She looked up as we came in and smiled at us both. Anna Callahan was one of the most beautiful women I had ever known, not because her features themselves were so spectacularly stunning, but because of her quite self-acceptance, as if she knew that she was not conventionally pretty and had no intention of trying to be so. Her smile lit up her blue eyes and brightened her whole face.

"I called Miles and told him you were having dinner here", she told me. "I know I should have asked you first, but it was getting so late and the forecast called for a hailstorm this evening."

"That's alright, Mrs. Callahan", I answered.

"If the storm starts while you're here, Miles said it would be fine for you to spend the night as well", she continued as she rose to get me a bowl of something simmering on the stove and emitting a savory smell. She gave Alex a pointed look, and he went off to prepare the couch for me. They often communicated without saying anything.

She set the bowl, full of chunks of meat and potatoes and carrots, in front of me with a spoon and poured me a glass of water from the pitcher on the kitchen table.

"Irish stew", she said, motioning towards the bowl. "Good on a cold night like this."

"Thanks", I answered as I sat down and began to eat. The stew was excellent, rich and warm with all the various flavors blending together in my mouth. Alex joined me at the table with his math homework, which looked crumpled and smudged.

He opened his mouth, but Mrs. Callahan shot him a warning look before he could say anything.

"No. Let James finish his food before you start bothering him with your math homework."

"Fine", he muttered.

She resumed typing on her laptop, furrowing her brow in concentration and not seeing the "hurry-up" motions Alex made at me when he was sure she wasn't looking. I pointedly ignored him as I sipped my stew.

After dinner, we went to Alex's room, presumably to do homework, but both of us knew that most of it would remain unfinished. There was just too much to talk about.

"So what else did you find out?" Alex asked as soon as we had situated ourselves, him sprawled out on the bed and me sitting on his desk with my feet on the chair.

"Where do I even begin?" I replied, still trying to mentally process it all. "It turns out that my mom's still alive, my real dad was a world-class jerk, Miles has been lying to me for seventeen years about being my father, and to top it all off, he's a demigod. Son of Hermes."

Alex whistled appreciatively as he lay staring at the ceiling.

"So he and Kira are like, siblings or something?" I asked him.

He shrugged.

"Yeah, I guess. But try not to think too much about the godly side of family stuff. Trust me; you don't want to go there. I know a guy, Percy Jackson, whose relatives include a Cyclops and a winged horse."

"Dude. That's messed up."

He nodded, sitting up on the bed and running a hand through his disheveled blond hair.

"You look like a mess", I informed him.

"Please, James, the word is _dishabille_."

"Which means what, exactly?"

"That I look like a mess, but with bags and bags of style."

"Yeah, right", I snorted, throwing a pillow at his face.

He put up his hands and caught it, then placed it behind his back and leaned back.

"So what do we do now?" he asked me expectantly. His eyes were bright with manic energy and his left knee was jiggling with impatience.

"I need to find my mom", I told him. The words surprised me as soon as they came out of my mouth, but as soon as I had said them, I knew I had meant them. The shock of finding out that she was still alive was almost greater than finding out that the Greek gods were real and were still behaving the way they had countless millennia before with regard to mortals.

"It won't be easy", I continued. "Miles told me that he'd already tried looking for her years ago, with no luck. She's probably changed her name and appearance by now, and she could be anywhere."

"Challenge accepted", Alex smiled deviously, steepling his fingers. "We have more to go off than you think. Think, James. What was her name, and how old would she be now? What did she do before disappearing? What was her husband's name?"

I put up my hand to block against a further flood of questions and tried to think back to what Miles had told me.

"Stephanie", I answered hesitantly. "Her name was Stephanie Anne Ryland. And Miles said he saw her last at their ten-year high school reunion, where she would've been 27 or 28. So now she's—"I calculated quickly in my head—"44 or 45. About Miles' age."

Alex nodded encouragingly, gesturing at me to continue. I noticed that he had picked up a dog-eared spiral notebook from somewhere and was filling up a page with his illegible scrawl.

"She was an actress", I went on, "A stage actress, not a movie actress. She was in a touring stage production at the time. And she didn't have a husband; at least I don't think so. Her boyfriend at the time was some jerk psychiatrist or something. Miles didn't give me a name."

He finished making a final few notes, and then looked up at me and smiled.

"See, we've got something. Not much, but it's better than nothing. If we could just get access to the right records from seventeen years ago, it might be enough to point us in the right direction."

"Hacking", I said, staring at him. "You're talking about hacking into court records. Government records. That's a crime, Alex."

"And your point is?" he asked me. "Obviously I can't do it myself. Demigods and technology don't seem to mix very well. The last time I tried using a laptop I nearly made it spontaneously combust, and besides, technology attracts monsters."

"But this is wrong", I told him, trying to get my point across.

"Not when we're doing it for a good reason", he countered, "and right now, I can't think of a better one."

"What is this, 'the ends justify the means' or something? That's the oldest argument in the book, Alex."

"And I've never liked it", he said, pushing up his glasses with his index finger. "I mean, it's ridiculous when you think about it, James. Of course the ends justify the means; the ends are the whole reason for using the means to begin with. If they didn't, then they wouldn't really be the ends. The true ends would really just be better means, which is circular reasoning, which is stupid."

"I think you've lost me there", I admitted. "But don't you still feel bad about the thought of doing all this?"

"Heck no", he answered. "The government spies on people and takes their information all the time. Why shouldn't we do a little snooping for the greater good?"

I didn't say anything. Alex, in a rare moment of perceptiveness, decided not to push.

"Sleep on it, James", he said, briefly putting his hand on my shoulder.

"What about the math homework?" I asked him as he went into the bathroom. He pretended not to hear me.


	9. Chapter 9

I was awakened in the early hours of the morning by someone vigorously shaking my shoulders.

"Alex", I groaned, pushing him away. "What time is it, you doofus?"

"About two in the morning. But never mind about that. Wake up, James!"

He snapped his fingers under my nose as I started nodding off again. I tried to rub the sleep from my eyes. I felt as sluggish and slow as cold gravy, and nearly as unpleasant.

Alex stripped the blanket off of me in one sweeping motion. I reached out for it, but he had already swung it over his shoulders and stood there holding it to himself like a cape.

"Could you be any more dramatic?" I muttered as I reluctantly sat up, brushing my hair back from my face with a rough shove.

"Comes with the turf", Alex said in his idea of a whisper. "My dad is literally the god of drama."

He grabbed my shoulders eagerly, letting the blanket fall into a tangled heap on the floor.

"Lyra Kazantzakis", he said as he stared into my eyes, "She's a hacker."

"Yeah. So?" I mumbled. "Listen, Alex, it's way too early in the morning for—"

"Get dressed, you pathetic, caffeine-dependent freak of nature!" he yelled in a whisper. "Places to go, people to see, and you have two minutes before I drag you out into the cold half-naked with your hair looking like an evil porcupine."

I pulled yesterday's crumpled shirt over my head and reached for my jeans from the edge of the couch.

"Pathetic, caffeine-dependent freak of nature", I repeated, sulking. "There's one I haven't heard before."

Alex had the decency to leave the room as I struggled into my pants, still dazed from being woken up so suddenly at such an ungodly hour of the morning. Either that or he was excited enough to wet his pants if he stood still waiting for me.

He came back with a mug in one hand and a post-it note in the other. The mug he handed to me, and the post-it note he stuck to the frame of the picture hanging above the couch.

"It's a note telling Mom what we're doing", he explained. "She's used to this kind of thing, but she still likes it when I leave a note."

I sipped the coffee he'd brought me, letting the warmth seep into my toes. Alex had made it just the way I liked it, with just enough cream to change the color of the coffee and an obscene amount of sugar. He shuffled impatiently as I drained the mug, and nearly sighed with relief when I placed it on the coffee table empty.

"I know you're pretty much useless until you've had coffee", he explained, "So I made it before waking you up."

I didn't deny the fact as I stood up and stretched. The note Alex had scrawled said "Demigod business. Left at 2", in smudged pen.

"That's not much of an explanation, Alex", I chided him as I followed him out the door.

"Relax, James. It's not like we're doing anything illegal."

"Yet", I reminded him as I closed the door behind us. "We're not doing anything illegal yet."

New York was strangely quiet at two o'clock in the morning. The hailstorm had kept most would-be night owls for going out to party, and the early-morning crowd hadn't yet woken up. The sky was barely beginning to lighten, and a piercing wind cut through my thin windbreaker, chilling me to the bone. Alex didn't seem to notice, even though his leather jacket couldn't have provided any more protection. His glasses were fogged over so that I couldn't see his eyes, but he seemed comfortable enough, whistling under his breath and keeping up with my stride even though his spindly legs were much shorter.

"This couldn't wait until morning?" I asked him.

"She's practically nocturnal", he told me. "It's like, midafternoon for her right now."

"Is she, y'know, anything like Kira?" I ventured. I remembered the subtly uncomfortable feeling Kira gave me, the way her glance cut like a knife. I wasn't sure I could handle that this early in the morning.

"Thank the gods, no", Alex answered, chuckling. "Lyra's more like your typical geek. And she doesn't look slightly pissed off all the time, for one thing. Although she does tend to curse in Ancient Greek if she thinks you're being an idiot."

"Charming girl", I muttered.

"Relax, James, she'll like you. I'm sure of it."

"Oh, really. Why's that?"

"Because she's one of the student researchers who treats the kids at our school like lab rats. She remembered you since she's read a lot of your mental health evaluations. Entertaining stuff, she said. She called you 'a mystery wrapped in an enigma topped with a puzzle, seasoned with a healthy dose of sarcasm.'"

I smiled as we kept walking. I worked very hard to make my psychological evaluations as useless as possible, and it was nice to know that someone appreciated my efforts.

We approached the campus of Grantham College, the school that sponsored Grantham Lab School. Alex led me towards the dingy concrete science building, and pointed around it towards the back.

"Should be a basement entrance around here somewhere", he muttered, his keen eyes searching one out in the early-morning gloom.

He found it and tapped in the four-digit security code, complaining about it as the door swung open.

"Honestly, a security code on the basement entrance", he snorted. "What do they think I'll steal, test tubes?"

We walked towards the one lighted spot in the cavernous darkness of the basement. One corner had been set up like a makeshift office, with a door balanced on a couple of sawhorses as a desk and a battered swivel chair opposite it. There was also a beanbag chair against the wall and a heap of snacks arranged on the rug in front of it. A power generator and a safe with papers stacked on top of it completed the setup. Sitting at the table with a bag of chips open in front of her was a restless girl who was busily typing away on her laptop while eating chips, cursing quietly under her breath. Her wavy dark hair, so much like her sister's, was streaked with purple, at least the part I could see under the beanie she wore, and her dark eyes were framed with thick green glasses. She was wearing a Grantham college sweatshirt and slim dark jeans, and she looked up as she saw us coming. Instantly, her sulky expression morphed into a grin as she rose to give Alex a hug.

"Alex, if you go this long without visiting me again, I swear to all the gods I will find you and kick your lousy butt", she said before she let him go. Her voice was very different from Kira's. I thought I could detect a slight English accent, and she had the smallest trace of a lisp, probably from having had braces.

"And this must be James", she said, catching sight of me. She grinned and stuck out her hand, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

"Lyra Kazantzakis", she introduced herself enthusiastically.

I shook her hand, which was cold and pale.

"Settle in and make yourselves at home, guys", she said, motioning us towards the beanbag chair and rug. "And Alex, if you eat all my Oreos again, you'll have Hades to pay for it."

"She's always threatening me", he explained with a sheepish smile as we sat down, him on the beanbag and me with my legs stretched out on the rug.

"Whatcha working on, Lyra?" He asked, stuffing his mouth with one of the precious Oreos.

"Just practicing", she answered. "Trying to hack into the records of the government of Iceland."

Alex nodded like this didn't surprise him at all while I stared at her with my mouth open.

"Any luck?"

"Some. But there're just so many layers of security on these things."

She closed her laptop and turned in her seat to look at us.

"So what can I do for you two?" she asked, dusting chip dust off her hands onto the floor.

I looked at Alex and he looked at me. Lyra tapped her sneakered foot on the concrete floor impatiently. Alex made 'hurry up' motions at me with his hands.

"We need your help to find a missing person", I blurted out at last, marveling at how distant that phrase made all of this seem.

Lyra nodded as if she'd done this before.

"How long ago missing? And from where?"

"Seventeen years", I answered, a cold feeling growing in my stomach. "And she lived in the States but she could be anywhere by now."

Lyra exhaled in an exasperated puff.

"Great. Do you have a photo of her?"

"No", I said, "but she was my mother, so maybe she looked something like me. I doubt it though, since Miles said she was beautiful."

Lyra laughed. It was a pleasant laugh, a soft churr of delight. Somehow, it was like the light that you saw glinting through the tops of trees when you were lying on your back on a sunny day.

"You're pretty enough", she told me impishly, "Though that hair could maybe use some work."

"I told him it looked like an evil porcupine", Alex chimed in brightly.

She laughed again, throwing her whole head back this time. I blushed and tried to pat down my hair with one hand.

"No, not like that", Lyra said, coming toward me. She knelt down in front of me and pulled a comb out of her sweatshirt pocket.

"I always carry one", she explained as she tackled my thick, unruly hair. "It's a necessity when your hair gets as frizzy as mine does. Good grief, James, you could make three wigs and still have hair left over."

I smiled at the disbelieving expression on her face. It felt good to have someone touch my hair, even if that someone was a girl I barely knew whose sister intimidated me without even trying.

"Miles says it comes from the Italian side of the family", I told her. "His mother's side all have messy dark hair that's so thick it can blunt scissors."

Then I remembered that I wasn't actually related by blood to Miles' side of the family. I was surprised by the sudden pang of loneliness I felt. Memories flashed in my mind of my grandma from Miles' side, my Nona. How she was always scolding Miles for not feeding me as much as she thought a growing boy needed, how she had praised his valiant attempt at making lasagna before tactfully sending us home with a big bag of precooked food in labeled containers and without the horrendous lasagna, how she would sit me on her lap, with her little dog Tino on my lap, and sing to me and stroke my hair while I petted the dog.

"Well, at least now it doesn't look like you just got out of bed", Lyra informed me, jerking me back to reality. She noticed the flush on my face and the corner of her mouth twitched upward.

"You're adorable", she told me. "Of course, I knew you'd be perfectly lovely once Kira told me how aggravating she thought you were, but I didn't think you'd be this nice."

"Thanks, I guess", I mumbled, dipping my head so that she couldn't see me blush even more. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Alex was enjoying the scene very much and trying hard not to laugh.

Lyra made her way back to her computer and typed a few lines of code.

"It's a shame you don't have a photo", she told me. "If you did, then I could run facial recognition and save us all a lot of trouble."

"Miles might have one, though. I'll see if I can get it to you later today."

"Sounds good. Alex can show you where I live. If my demented roommate answers the door, just ignore her. I'd suspect her of being a monster sent to torment me if that didn't insult the intelligence of most monsters."

I raised my eyebrows and looked at Alex. He nodded in agreement.

"Full name please", Lyra said, entering a final few characters onto the screen.

"Stephanie Anne Ryland", I answered, barely daring to hope.

Lyra quickly typed in it and hit the 'search' button.

"Hmm...interesting", she said to herself a moment later.

"What is it?" I asked, looking over her right shoulder as Alex peered over her left.

"I can find her picture but no documents", Lyra said slowly, puzzled. "I mean, who does that? Takes all the time to erase tax statements, social media platforms, even her own birth certificate, but leaves pictures of her face for anyone to find online? What game is she playing at?"

I looked at the pictures Lyra had found and gasped. She looked so much like, and yet so utterly unlike, me.

Her hair was lighter than mine, dark blond with glints of chestnut in it. And her eyes were lighter too, pale blue instead of dishwater-color. But they were my eyes all the same, framed with the same thick, dark lashes and nearly straight eyebrows. Her skin was just as pale as mine, with the faint flush in her cheek that seemed to come so easily to us both. Her full mouth was set in a teasing smile and her top lip had a prominent dent in it just like my own. She looked about twenty or twenty-one in the picture, not that much older than me.

I felt an ache in my chest for something I had never had. My hands clenched inadvertently into fists and I blinked rapidly to prevent from crying. I couldn't trust myself to say anything.

"Wow, James. She's gorgeous", Alex said, staring at the screen.

"Dude, that's his mom you're talking about", Lyra scolded, punching him on the arm.

He flashed her a dirty look and made a big deal out of rubbing his arm where she'd punched him.

She rolled her eyes back at him, knowing that she hadn't hurt him at all.

"This is great", she went on, downloading the image to her computer. "Turns out I'll be able to run facial rec after all."

"Lyra, before you do", I said, my voice cracking despite my best intentions, "could you send me a copy?"

She looked into my eyes, and just for a second, I glimpsed the shadow of a worried look pass over her face.

"Sure, James", she answered in a quieter tone. She put her hand on my arm and gave a gentle squeeze. "This must be hard for you."

"I'll be fine", I told her. But I wasn't sure I believed it myself.


	10. Chapter 10

The sun was just beginning to rise as we made our way out of the science building. I could already hear the first of the morning traffic beginning, and a few ambitious food cart owners were already setting up for the day's business.

"Hurry up, James", Alex chided me. "With luck, we can still get in a couple hours of sleep before school starts."

I shook my head.

"You go ahead. I didn't get to scrub down the bathrooms yesterday after school, so I'm going to try to get in early to do that."

He made a face.

"Just bring my books with you later on, okay?"

"Okay."

We trudged off in opposite directions, our footsteps sounding hollow on the sidewalk. I felt numb inside, as if I were looking down at someone else's life. I felt cold inside, even though it wasn't a particularly cold morning for New York in February.

I let myself in through the side door of the school building and unlocked the janitor's closet to get my mop, multipurpose cleaning spray, and bucket. With luck, I'd be able to finish both bathrooms before students started arriving. I made my way to the girls' bathroom and propped the door open with a wooden wedge. In case I could only get through one bathroom before school started, I knew that the girls would care more about having a clean bathroom than the guys would.

I nearly dropped my bucket when I saw Kira walk out of the girl's bathroom with a slight smile on her face.

"How did you even get in here?" I nearly shouted at her.

"You're seriously asking a Hermes kid how she got into a building with virtually no security?"

"Right. Sorry. Better question: why are you here?"

"To steal your documents. Duh."

I stared at her in disbelief. Only then did I notice that Kira was dressed in all black, with several metal implements hanging off of her belt. She carried a dark-blue duffle bag, and she was wearing gloves.

"You've got to be kidding", I told her.

"It's for your own good!" she insisted. "If we can't trace your mom through her documents, we might be able to find her through yours. Lyra asked me to pick them up directly so that she wouldn't have to waste time hacking into the school system."

"Lyra told you I was going to see her?"

"No, James, obviously I bugged you with a microchip when we were talking yesterday", she replied sarcastically. "Yes, Lyra told me. She woke me up, actually."

"Right. Sorry about that."

She cracked a grin and chuckled. "I'm stealing your documents and _you're_ apologizing? Honestly, James, if I didn't know you weren't Canadian, I'd have my doubts."

She shook her hand and brushed me aside to make her way to the principal's office where all the student records were kept.

"Carry on, James", she said in parting, patting my shoulder as she passed.

I drew in my breath sharply and looked after her. I could still feel the pressure of her fingers on my shoulder as she walked down the hallway.

I shook my head to clear it and started on the bathroom floor. _Don't be an idiot_ , I mentally scolded myself. _She could never think about you that way_. With grim determination, I mopped the floor with aggressive, sweeping strokes, racing against the clock. Despite the excellent coffee Alex had made me, I started to feel the fatigue of our early morning escapades. My speed slowed, my eyelids drooped, and I stifled a massive yawn.

I felt tired, irritable, and six years old again, sick and tired of the constant moving, the constant fruitless searching, and the constant explaining to people why I didn't have a mom and why I lived out of my car. A wave of helpless loneliness washed over me, and suddenly, I found myself sobbing like I hadn't done in so many years, the tears pouring down over my face and onto my shirt.

The mop fell from my hands as I pressed them over my face, crying like a baby. I felt homesick for something I had never known.

I heard Kira reenter the bathroom to exit through the skylight, but at this point, I was so miserable that I didn't even care that she could see me bawling my face off.

"Oh, James", she said quietly.

She gently pried my hands from my face and hugged me. I could feel her hand stroking my hair as I cried. We stayed like that for a long time, until I had no tears left. I felt drained and empty, but somehow at ease, as if I had regained my footing on solid ground.

"Thanks", I hiccupped as she pulled away.

"No problem", she answered. "It's a lot to take in all at once."

I shrugged and knelt to pick up the mop from where it had fallen.

"James, I think you might just be the most fundamentally decent person I've ever met", Kira said, shaking her head as I started again on the bathroom floor.

"Why's that?" I muttered, my eyes on the floor for telltale streaks of grime.

"You learn something about your mom that turns your whole life upside down, and the first thing you do afterwards is clean toilets like nothing's the matter."

"The floor", I contradicted her. "I put off cleaning the toilets on purpose, knowing that I probably wouldn't have the time to get around to them."

"Whatever. You get my point", she said airily, prying the skylight open with a slim metal crowbar she had unclipped from her belt.

"Cleaning bathrooms helps me think", I answered. "And it would be a lot easier for you to leave through the back door, you know. I left it unlocked."

She shook her head as she climbed out of the skylight.

"Gotta stay in practice", she said as she silently closed it behind her, duffle bag in one hand.

I shook my head and smiled as I started wiping down the sinks.


	11. Chapter 11

Alex handed me a covered paper cup of coffee as soon as he sat down next to me in Western Civ class.

"Thanks, man", I told him under my breath. The coffee was perfect, warming me right down to my bones without burning my tongue.

He smiled and mouthed the words "pathetic, caffeine-addicted freak of nature" at me as he sat down. I punched him on the shoulder in retaliation, just hard enough to get my point across and not enough to really hurt him.

"Gentlemen, is there problem?" came the deep, Russian-accented voice of our Western Civ professor, Dr. Lazarov, from the front of the room. He often forgot his articles when he wasn't thinking about it. Alex thought it made him sound like the Russian thugs in B-grade spy dramas.

"No, sir", I managed to say, careful not to catch Alex's eye.

"Then kindly please shut up", he answered, looking tired. Dr. Lazarov had learned much of his English on the street or when interacting with students over the years. I don't think he knew a more polite way to say "shut up". He ran his hand through his thick graying hair and sighed, turning back to the whiteboard.

"As I was saying", he continued with a final glare in our general direction, "I grade your midterms and most of them are crap. I don't know if any of you open textbook at all. Only exception is Mr. Morgan here. Well done, James."

I blushed and nodded my thanks so that nobody would see it. Miles had drilled those history facts into my brain every evening for the last three weeks, and it seemed like his hard work had paid off.

"Now we begin new unit", Dr. Lazarov announced. "A chance for you people to redeem yourselves. Page 94. The ancient Greeks."

I glanced over at Alex and saw him smile faintly as he rifled through the pages of his textbook. Finally, a unit that not even Alex could butcher.

Dr. Lazarov basically held the view that the lab school was a useless failure and that we would all be better off panhandling in the streets than being psychoanalyzed within an inch of our lives supposedly getting an education. I had heard him mouthing off to the other teachers after hours about how lousy the school was and how ill-prepared we were all going to be for the real world while I was taking out the trash in his office. Despite his gloomy pessimism, though, you couldn't help but like the guy. There was something endearing about his fussiness and bad humor. He was completely intolerant of anything he considered a waste of time or effort, often muttering "get on with it, you idiot" when someone addressed him at length without focusing on the point. The one thing he had going for him was that Dr. Lazarov didn't single anyone out for bad treatment. He hated everyone equally.

"Okay. Before we start, impress me with your lousy knowledge about the Greeks", he commanded, marker poised over the whiteboard.

Silence. The class was faithfully obeying that first unspoken rule of school: Keep expectations low and your life will be that much easier.

"Pathetic", Dr. Lazarov muttered under his breath just as Alex cleared his throat.

"Yes, Mr. Callahan?" he said without much enthusiasm. Dr. Lazarov didn't require his students to raise their hands before speaking. He looked like he regretted this since Alex was known for waxing eloquent about wild historical conspiracy theories in his class.

"They had, like, all these gods", Alex blurted out. "Like dozens of them. But there were twelve main ones that ruled on Mt. Olympus and were mainly worshipped and stuff."

"Points off for 'like' and 'stuff'", Dr. Lazarov answered drily. "But yes, that's a start. We have to begin somewhere, so today's lesson will be Greek gods. Well done, Mr. Callahan. Sticking to facts for once."

Alex just gave him a cheery smile, knowing it would irritate him.

Dr. Lazarov scrawled the textbook page numbers onto the board in a firm, black hand and then gave the class the evil eye as he underlined them twice.

"So you have no excuses for not opening textbook", he said menacingly to the class.

He pretended not to notice the collective gulp given by the class as shoulders suddenly straightened and pencils were poised over paper.

"The ancient Greeks did indeed worship twelve main gods who were said to live on Mt. Olympus", he continued. "They often messed with people's lives, working against each other just as much as together. A regular dysfunctional family. Except one goddess, who try to keep peace. For one extra credit point on your terrible midterms, what was her name?"

"Hestia", called out Alex without any hesitation. "The goddess of the hearth."

Dr. Lazarov nodded.

"Correct, Mr. Callahan. One point I add to your score. Don't answer again."

Alex did a little victory dance in his seat and looked smug. That one point had probably meant the difference between a 'D' and a 'C' for him.

Dr. Lazarov cleared his throat and quoted, in a voice very different from his usual harsh, grating tones: "Hestia, in the high dwellings of all, both deathless gods and men who walk on earth, you have gained an everlasting abode and highest honor: glorious is your portion and your right. For without you mortals hold no banquet, - where one does not duly pour sweet wine in offering to Hestia both first and last."

He glanced around the room to see if anyone recognized the quotation and frowned at the blank expressions staring back at him. He looked disappointed but not surprised.

"Sad. Very sad", he said. "From a hymn written by Greek poet Homer, praising Hestia and the god Hermes, asking for their help and favor. For one more point on your miserable midterms, who was Hermes?"

I kept quiet even though the answer jumped into my head from my earlier talk with Miles. No use in taking a point that would be more useful to someone else.

"Wasn't he, like, this god who had wings on his feet or something? So he could, like, fly?"

The voice belonged to Meredith Carlson, a girl in the front row who always sounded like she was asking a question no matter what she was saying. She had taken an interest in me towards the beginning of the school year and had made it painfully obvious what she wanted from me, but she'd cooled off when she discovered that I worked as a janitor for the school since I was basically broke. Apparently she was used to her boyfriends buying her presents and taking her out for expensive nights on the town. I remember being mostly relieved that I didn't have to actively work to avoid her anymore. That girl scared me.

Dr. Lazarov pinched the bridge of his nose as if to avoid a migraine.

"Take half point, Miss Carlson. Hermes had winged shoes, yes. Does anyone know anything actually substantial about the god?"

Meredith narrowed her eyes and pouted. Dr. Lazarov pretended not to notice, but I could see a faint, bitter smile curving the corner of his mouth. It was the only kind of smile he had.

"He was the god of thieves", I said as Meredith turned her glare on me. "And of lawyers and lies. And once he killed someone by boring him to death."

"Much as I have been thought to do", replied Dr. Lazarov with a nod. "Take half point you don't need, Mr. Morgan. Now for the rest of class: What did these two gods have in common?"

The silence that followed was palpable. I looked over at Alex, who seemed to be oblivious to what had just been asked. He was busily sketching a portrait in blue ballpoint pen of Dr. Lazarov looking annoyed, emphasizing the furrowed brow and the heavy eyebrows. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. It was an excellent likeness, exaggerated and irreverent as only Alex could pull it off, yet somehow accurate. It was like Alex was drawing Dr. Lazarov the way he saw himself, as a tortured, conflicted intellectual who was fed up with the world but too tired to do anything about it.

Dr. Lazarov looked at Alex and sighed, his expression suddenly looking just like the one in the pen-drawn portrait.

"Mr. Callahan, kindly please pay attention. If you only—"

"And you, slayer of Argus, Son of Zeus and Maia, messenger of the blessed gods, bearer of the golden rod, giver of good, be favorable and help us, you and Hestia, the worshipful and dear. Come and dwell in this glorious house in friendship together; for you two, well knowing the noble actions of men, aid on their wisdom and their strength. Hail, Daughter of Cronos, and you also, Hermes, bearer of the golden rod!" Alex half sung the words without looking up from his sketch, continuing the hymn Dr. Lazarov had begun earlier. His tone was effortless, smooth and sweet and crystal-clear.

Dr. Lazarov stared at him speechless, and Alex fearlessly returned the piercing gaze of his ice-green eyes, coolly adjusting his glasses.

"Mr. Callahan", he finally said, a faint tremble in his voice, "You are far more than you appear."

"So I've been told", Alex replied expressionlessly, brushing the hair out of his eyes. Despite his skinny frame, messy blond mop, and oversized leather jacket, he looked like a force to be reckoned with. I could see Meredith eying him with interest, and I felt sorry for him already.

"Indeed, the hymn sums up the relationship between Hestia and Hermes better than anything I could tell you", Dr. Lazarov continued in a more normal tone. "They were the closest gods to mankind, the most sympathetic to the struggles we face on earth. Hestia, goddess of the hearth and family, Hermes, god of thieves and protector of mortals."

He looked over the class, at the disinterest evident in most of the student's faces, and the look in his eyes suddenly made him look very old.

"For homework, I want you all to memorize the twenty-ninth Homeric hymn to Hestia and Hermes", he told us, ignoring the ensuing groans. "I want it perfect by Wednesday morning. And I know you can find it in the library or online, so no excuses."

He ignored the dull thunk of textbooks being closed and the undercurrent of quiet cursing as students exited the classroom, removing his glasses and settling down to grade a pile of yesterday's quizzes.

"Callahan, stay here", he said without looking up as Alex walked past him.

Alex flashed me a frantic 'get-me-out-of-here' expression as he came to a stop.

"You too, Mr. Morgan."

So that was that.

Dr. Lazarov looked at both of us in turn the way you'd look at a particularly difficult puzzle. His gaze was cool and detached, but a pulsing intensity burned behind it. Without his glasses, he looked far more awake, and his eyes looked like lethal weapons honing in on a target.

"How is it", he said slowly, studying Alex, "that a student who has been on the brink of failing this class since it began suddenly knows the words to 29th Homeric hymn, and, not only that, can recite them like a Greek high priest with perfect pitch and intonation?"

Alex said nothing, but that didn't seem to bother Dr. Lazarov, who was apparently on a roll.

"To look at your handwriting, one would doubt you were literate, and this I say as someone who's had to read Russian cursive. Very bad Russian cursive. To grade your tests, one would conclude that you have no concept of history at all, that you live in an endless present. And yet…"

He trailed off, looking at Alex expectantly. It quickly turned into another stare-down between the two of them. I cleared my throat pointedly, realizing that I'd be late for Chemistry two days in a row unless I left soon.

"And yet?" Alex asked testily, and I thought, calmly. Then I saw the lump of his clenched fist in his jacket pocket and the terror behind the seemingly nonchalant look in his bloodshot blue eyes. I put a steadying hand on his shoulder and felt how tense it was.

He seemed to calm down a little under the pressure of my hand. I could barely hear the strain in his voice as he replied.

"I wouldn't be too surprised, Dr. Lazarov. I know all thirty-three of Homer's hymns."

Dr. Lazarov looked dumbfounded. Alex smiled a little, and I could see a mischievous twinkle in his eyes again. I removed my hand, and he straightened and almost seemed to glow a little.

Dr. Lazarov unexpectedly quoted at lightning speed:

"Hestia, you who tend the holy house of the lord Apollo, the Far-shooter at goodly Pytho—"

"With soft oil dripping ever from your locks, come now into this house, come, having one mind with Zeus the all-wise: draw near, and withal bestow grace upon my song", finished Alex leisurely, caressing the words with his voice as he recited them.

"But this is incredible!" Dr. Lazarov was on his feet at once. "Where, by all the gods, did you ever learn the Homeric hymns so perfectly?"

"Oh, you know, here and there", Alex replied evasively, looking flushed and pleased with himself.

"No, I don't", he replied in his blunt way, "but it's clear that's exactly what you intend. Very well, Mr. Callahan. Till tomorrow."

He went back to his desk and to the pile of quizzes, brandishing his red pen like a sword.

"Dr. Lazarov?" I asked quietly, still standing in the doorway.

"Please. It's after class hours. Call me Ilya."

"Ilya, then."

The name felt strange on my tongue. Somehow I hadn't thought of Dr. Lazarov having a first name, or even a life outside of teaching history.

"Umm…you asked me to stay too."

He waved his hand at me dismissively without looking up.

"Oh, that. That was just to keep Callahan from passing out from nervousness on my nice clean floor. You can go."

He did his best to look nonchalant and preoccupied, but I could almost believe that I felt his eyes studying my back introspectively as I left the room in a hurry.


	12. Chapter 12

I caught up with Alex at lunch. We had staked out our territory at the beginning of the semester, and so far, no one had challenged our possession of it. I had once pointed out that this probably had to do with the closeness of our table to the trash cans, but Alex had chosen to conveniently ignore me.

"Alex. What even is that?" I asked him, staring in disgust at his lunch.

"It's an Irish stew sandwich. The bread soaks up all the gravy. And don't diss my lunch, James—I packed you the exact same thing."

"Lucky me."

I glumly opened the crumpled brown paper bag Alex had given me. My soggy sandwich stared back at me, looking just as sad as I did. I sighed and unwrapped it, and then took a bite. It was alright, but then again, I wasn't picky about what I ate. Living with Miles, I had grown accustomed over the years to a steady diet of cold pizza, peanut butter, and instant noodles. Occasionally Miles would splurge and we'd go out to eat Italian or Thai.

The sandwich quickly disappeared, and I surprised myself by feeling sad when it was gone. With my stomach somewhat full, a nagging question that had been tugging on the back of my mind sped to the forefront.

"Hey Alex."

"Yeah?"

"How come you know all those hymns to the gods?"

He gave a wry smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. For just a moment, he looked like a younger, blond version of Dr. Lazarov.

"My mom thought it would be a good idea", he said in a flat tone. I was amazed by how different and dead his voice sounded without its usual musical undertones.

"The Homeric hymns call on the gods for help, so she thought it would be good to know them. Like, in case I needed to ask my dad for help in an emergency. Words that have been hallowed to the gods so many years ago have a sort of power to them, so they're more likely to get the gods' attention."

"So it's like having the gods on speed-dial."

He gave a harsh laugh.

"You're assuming the gods are reliable. I mean, yeah, it's just about the best way to get their attention without the risk of immediate death being thrown in as a perk, but the gods have their own reasons for choosing whether to appear or not. So if a particular god hates your guts, don't count on it."

"Thanks for the warning."

Alex finally looked up from the table and saw something that instantly put him in a better mood.

"Hey James, your girlfriend's trying to find you."

"She's not my—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Save it, buddy. Here she comes."

Sure enough, Kira was speeding towards us, nimbly weaving her way through the crowds of students hanging around and disposing of their trash. She gave me a tight smile when she saw me, but I could see that her thoughts were elsewhere.

"James", she said as soon as she arrived, placing both hands on the table as if to steady herself. "Lyra's been working on your documents, and she thinks she's found something."

"Well, hello to you too", Alex replied pointedly.

I braced myself for another petty exchange of insults between the two of them, but Kira was apparently as tired of that as I was.

"Hi, Alex", she muttered as if it pained her.

He looked surprised and pleased, a little smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

"Well, that's definitely a step up from 'Get out of my way or die, Callahan'".

"Don't push it."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

They studied each other warily, as if gauging just how much they could get away with.

Finally Alex grinned and stuck his hand out at her. She looked at it like she wasn't quite sure what she was seeing.

"Truce?" he asked.

"Truce", she replied, reluctantly shaking his hand and almost immediately dropping it. "Until we find out what happened to James' mom."

I exhaled with relief. I wasn't even aware that I had been holding my breath in dread.

"Great", I said to both of them. "Wonderful. When does Lyra want to see us?"

"She said after school would be alright", answered Kira, sitting down across from Alex. "Her last class ends at five, so any time after that should be fine. She'll be in her dorm instead of under the science building, since the crappy Wi-Fi is finally working again."

"I can be there by seven if I do a rush job cleaning up the school", I told her. "Seven thirty at the latest, since I want to drop in on Miles first."

"I'll help you out", Alex offered. "Then we can be there by seven. But Kira, isn't Lyra's roommate going to be there?"

"We're working on that", Kira said tensely. "Lyra's pulling favors right and left right now to set Courtney up on a date with some guy so she'll be out of the way. Worst case scenario, you'll distract her."

"Me? Distract Courtney?" Alex cried in disbelief. "Why do I always get the worst jobs?"

"Since when is there an 'always' between us?" Kira snapped. "Courtney hates me and she thinks you're cute. It's the perfect distraction."

"Courtney thinks anything that moves is cute", Alex countered. "With our luck, she'll even think James is cute, for crying out loud."

"Thanks for that", I muttered.

"Anytime, man", Alex replied, ruffling my already messy hair with one hand.

"Listen, I know it's not a great plan", Kira told us. "But it's what we've got, okay?"

"Okay then", Alex said. "See you at seven."

Kira nodded and rose to leave. As she walked away, I could hear her mutter softly under her breath: "And not before then, thank the gods."

I glanced across the table at Alex and saw that he was smiling as he picked us his trash. Apparently, he had heard her too.

"This is going to be so much fun", he said as he passed me on his way to the trash can.

I shook my head at his retreating figure.

"Fun. Right."


	13. Chapter 13

Alex met me at our locker after school let out, looking way too cheerful for someone who was going to spend the next couple hours of his life scrubbing toilets. He dumped his books in a messy heap and tapped his foot impatiently while I straightened them to make room for my own.

"Relax, man", I told him, knowing that 'relax' was not something Alex was really capable of doing. "It's not exactly a glamorous job."

"Well, duh", he said, rolling his eyes, enthusiasm intact. "But it's gotta pay like, three times what I make at the pizza place."

"You mercenary."

Alex flashed me a grin.

"I'm not expecting any of the money, James, so don't worry about it. Now, c'mon. It's toilet time!"

"Not exactly the most inspiring battle cry", I said to myself as I tagged along behind him.

I unlocked the janitor's closet as Alex rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

"So is this, like, your secret lair or something?" he asked eagerly.

"The operative phrase being 'or something'", I answered, reaching in for the gray coveralls that were my janitor's uniform. "I might have a spare pair for you around here somewhere."

"No kidding", Alex said, looking around the cavernous closet, "You could fit my whole room in here."

"Here", I tossed him another pair of coveralls. "It might be a little long in the sleeves and legs, but you can roll it up. Just put in on over your clothes."

He caught it and took off his leather jacket, carefully folding it up and placing it on a folding table in the closet where I kept my bucket and sponges. Alex loved that jacket. I had often seen him absentmindedly stroking it when he wasn't wearing it the way you'd stroke a favorite pet.

"You might want to move that", I cautioned him. "I don't want to spill any nasty chemicals on it."

I mixed up my signature cleaning concoction in the bucket, a vile mixture of two parts water, one part cleaning fluid, one part vinegar, one part alcohol, and a splash of ammonia. I had devised it myself when Miles and I were still living in Georgia as a way to save on buying cleaning fluid. If I rationed it out carefully, I could make a bottle of cleaning fluid last for weeks, which saved me almost twenty dollars a semester.

"That stuff looks like poison", Alex commented, peering over the edge of the bucket.

"Well, just don't breathe it in too deeply", I told him, giving the fluid in the bucket a final stir before pouring some of it into another bucket. "We want you lucid for your date tonight with Lyra's roommate."

"Gods of Olympus, don't remind me."

I chuckled as I carried the bucket outside. The hallway was deserted and empty, the harsh fluorescent lights pointing out every imperfection and spot on the walls and floors. I thought for the thousandth time how sad the hallway looked without the rush of activity and the buzz of conversation animating it. Alex seemed to be thinking the same thing as he looked around.

"Wow. It looks so much bigger now", he said, his voice echoing off the walls.

"And dirtier", I reminded him, handing him a mop. "Here. Start on this side of the hallway and I'll meet you in the middle."

He nodded and picked up the bucket to carry it to the farthest corner of the hallway. I picked up the other one and walked down the length of the hall with the mop in my other hand. I could hear Alex singing a pop song to himself as he worked, and even though that song usually annoyed me when I heard in played in the grocery store or other places, I suddenly felt glad that there was someone else in the building with me.

I mopped the gray linoleum floor with wide, vigorous strokes, letting my mind drift while my hands worked. I felt curiously at peace, even though I had no idea where Lyra's discoveries would lead. _This is who I am_ , I told myself. _This is what I have, and this is enough for me_. I found myself humming along to Alex's annoyingly catchy tune. By the time we got to the middle of the hallway, I was singing the song at the top of my lungs and Alex was harmonizing like a boss, weaving complicated melodies over and under and around the main tune. His voice was golden, rich and warm and mesmerizing, with the slightest boyish huskiness only adding to its beauty. I felt happier than I had in a long time.

We circled each other with our mops as if performing prearranged choreography, and then burst out laughing. I looked into his clear blue eyes, and for a moment, I thought I could see the carefree kid he would have been if the gods hadn't decided to mess with his life. I ached inside for that kid.

He held my gaze a little too long, a questioning look in his eyes.

"It's nothing", I assured him. _Snap out of it_ , I commanded myself.

He nodded, looking unconvinced. Alex's face could be read like a book, the set of his lips and the gleam in his eyes and the tilt of his head doing the talking for him. It made him a terrible liar.

"We should get started on the bathroom now", I told him. "And before you say anything, I've got dibs on the girls' bathroom."

"You pervert", he accused me in horrified fascination.

I rolled my eyes at him.

"No, doofus", I told him. "It's the cleaner one. Generally."

"Oh, I see how it is."

"Welcome to the job, buddy."

Alex shook his fist at me good-naturedly and made his way to the boys' bathroom. I went back to the janitor's closet for sponges and cleaning cloths for the mirrors. While I was there, I checked my phone and found out that we were making good time. I smiled to myself.

I walked to the boys' bathroom to give Alex his supplies only to find him attempting to mop the mirror, my potent concoction dripping off his mop onto the sinks. He looked at me guiltily and tried for an innocent smile.

"What the heck do you think you're doing?" I asked him. "Never mind, I don't want to know. I refuse to believe you're that stupid."

"Thanks, man!"

"Shut up. Just take these. Sponge for the toilets and cloth for the mirrors."

"Got it."

He took the cleaning supplies from my hands and dropped the sponge into his bucket. His palms were red and chafed.

"I should've gotten you gloves", I said, mentally kicking myself for forgetting to do so. My own hands were rough and calloused, discolored in a few places with chemical stains. I couldn't imagine Alex playing his violin with clumsy, ugly hands like mine. He needed gloves.

"It's okay, James".

"No, it isn't. You wait here and I'll get you a pair."

I hurried back to the janitor's closet to look for a pair of gloves. Who knew what Alex would get up to if I left him to his own devices for too long? The dark crevices of the room were unforgivingly bare, yielding nothing. Finally, on the corner of one shelf I saw a crumpled yellow mound that might just be—yes, they were indeed a pair of gloves, pathetic and faded as they were. I brushed off the dust and uncrumpled them as I sprinted back to the boys' bathroom.

Alex was sitting on the edge of the sink swinging his legs and twiddling his thumbs. I felt a surge of relief that he hadn't been doing anything dangerous or stupid. He held out his hands, and I helped him fit the gloves over them. I liked to think that I was doing a service to the world of music by doing so.

"Thanks, man", he said, slipping off the sink and reaching for his bucket. The faded yellow gloves made his graceful artist's hands look big and clumsy and somehow alien. Undaunted, he started whistling as he wiped the cloth over the mirror, winking at his reflection.

"I'll leave you alone now", I told him. "Try not to burn down the bathroom."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him flash me a cocky salute with his free hand as I exited the bathroom. I could see him miming striking a match out of the corner of my eye.


	14. Chapter 14

"I still smell like vinegar and ammonia", Alex lamented as we walked out of the school. The sun had set, and a chilly wind ruffled his hair. The bright lights of the city and the noises of horns honking and the nightlife just beginning accosted us as we made our way to Miles' office.

"Are you okay?" I asked him, slightly worried. In the glare of lamplight, he looked pale and tired, the darkness under his eyes more pronounced than ever. I wondered if I had worked him too hard the past couple of hours.

"Yeah", he answered. "It's just, you know, winter, and night. I don't do well without lots of sunlight. I guess it's an Apollo thing."

I thought back to fall semester and how much healthier Alex had looked when school started compared to just after Christmas break. I had almost worried that he had taken up a drug habit, the difference was so startling. I wondered why I hadn't noticed it earlier.

"How do you feel about pizza?" I asked him. "We can use your employee discount and get two, one for Miles and one for us and the girls. I'll pay you back for Miles'."

He waved aside my offer to pay.

"What's a pizza between friends? I think that's the best idea you've had today, James."

We half-jogged the three blocks to Antonio's Pizzeria, where Alex worked part-time. The warm glow of the lights inside gave the place a homey feel, and Alex inhaled heartily as soon as we stepped through the door.

"Ahh, oregano", he said to himself, wrapped in a hazy bliss of Italian-food scented dreams.

The girl behind the counter laughed at his expression. She was a small, elfin-looking girl who sported a choppy dark pixie-cut that only added to the elf-like resemblance.

"Hey Kat", said Alex with a lazy grin.

"This is James", he added in response to her questioning look, gesturing towards me as if showing off his latest acquisition.

"Hi", I said, giving her a pathetic half-wave before I could think of anything better to do. Cue blushing. I hate myself sometimes.

Kat was nice enough to stifle another laugh as she turned back to Alex for our order.

"A medium sausage and mushroom pizza and a large everything pizza, please. And don't forget to tack on the employee discount, Kat."

She rapidly punched some buttons on the cash register.

"$13.61 with the employee discount", she said.

Alex reached into his pocket for some crumbled bills that he attempted to straighten out before handing to Kat. While she made change, I looked around the restaurant. It was a small place, with only some dozen tables at most and five or so more seats against the counter. Nevertheless, every single table was full that night, and the pizza looked amazing.

"It's busy tonight, isn't it?" said Alex to Kat, echoing my observation.

"Very", she answered, handing him his change. "What with Valentine's Day coming up and all. We might have to bring back your heart-shaped pizzas from last year, Alex."

"What fun", he said with a smile, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "Valentine's Day always means more tips."

"Please. It doesn't need to be Valentine's Day for you to shamelessly flirt for tips."

"Hey, I do what I can to get by."

She rolled her golden-brown eyes at me, inviting me into their bantering. I liked that.

"So what's with your friend here?" she asked him, cocking her thumb in my direction. "Is he the strong, silent type or what?"

Alex snorted.

"More like the shy, tongue-tied type."

"Shut up, Alex", I muttered.

"Ooh, I like this guy already", Kat teased.

Thankfully, our pizzas arrived just then. Alex stepped back and gestured to me.

"All yours, James. I paid for them, you carry them."

"Fair enough", I told him, too tired to argue. I picked up the pizzas from the counter, refusing to meet Kat's amused gaze.

"See ya, Kat", Alex waved as he held the door open for me.

She smiled teasingly and waved back.

"No wonder you like going to work so much", I said pointedly at him as we walked along the busy street.

"Well, it's obviously not because of the money", Alex scoffed, and I remembered he was making less than minimum wage.

"I'm thinking of asking her out this weekend", he told me as we waited for the light to change at the intersection.

"Go for it, man."

"That's funny, coming from you."

"I will choose to ignore the implications of that remark for my social life."

"What implications? That was about as direct and in-your-face as I can get."

"Ever thought of going into politics?"

"Shut up, James", he said, shoving me with his elbow. I quickly swerved to steady the pizzas I was carrying, inadvertently stepping into a puddle of slush in the process.

"Watch it, Alex. This is your dinner I'm carrying."

He made an apologetic little half-bow, clasping his hands together for a moment. We had reached Miles' office building, which loomed over us like some giant beast charmed asleep. The light in Miles' office was shining, burning like a watchful eye in the night. I realized he was waiting for me, and I felt suddenly glad that we were bringing him a pizza.

We stepped into the lobby and made a beeline for the nearest elevator, Alex waving to everyone in sight as if we were celebrities.

"Could you be any more embarrassing?" I hissed at him as I pushed the elevator button multiple times.

"Oh, you don't want to know", he assured me with a dangerous smile.

The elevator opened, and a woman pushing her baby in a stroller stepped out. She gave us a nervous smile and quickly made her way down the lobby, not daring to look behind her. Alex, who had been making faces to the delight of the baby in the stroller, took this as a personal insult.

"Oh, come on, lady", he muttered under his breath. "What kind of thugs deliver pizza to the building they're about to rob, anyway?"

I nudged him into the elevator with my foot. We probably did look pretty intimidating with our day-old crumpled clothes, wild hair, and the manic expression in Alex's eyes. She probably thought he was on drugs or something.

I pushed the button for the sixteenth floor and adjusted the pizzas so that they rested more comfortably. I could smell them through the cardboard and I felt my stomach rumble in response. _Just a few more minutes_ , I promised it.

Finally, the elevator dinged. We had reached the sixteenth floor at last. Alex made a big show of letting me exit the elevator first, and I couldn't help smiling.

He bounced on the balls of his feet as we walked down the hall, and I marveled at his energy. The door was unlocked when we reached Miles' office, which was normal when he was keeping it open late. Inside, though, it was clear that he hadn't been seeing any clients. The mess of papers was still strewn all over the floor, and now both windows were covered with Miles' blocky black handwriting. He never used lowercase letters, but wrote instead in two different sizes of capital letters. In one corner of a window was a carefully drawn diagram of something that looked more complicated than a car engine. Miles was pacing back and forth in front of it, occasionally adding details with a fine-tipped black marker. He was wearing a button-down shirt and tie, as if he had just gotten back from court, but the collar was loosened and the sleeves were rolled up.

He smiled sheepishly at the two of us when he heard the door open and hastily capped his marker.

"James! Alex! Come on in".

We carefully stepped over his piles of papers and placed the pizzas on his desk. He gave me an unexpected hug, and I could see the excitement in his eyes.

"Good day at court?" I asked him.

"That would be a contradiction in terms", he replied with a smile. "But the cross-examination went much better than I expected. I'm starting to think I could really win this thing!"

"That's great!" Alex piped up, doing a little victory dance on the only uncluttered part of the floor.

"Indeed", Miles agreed, reaching out to include Alex in the hug. We stayed like that for a brief moment, and then Miles let go of the two of us.

His eyes fell on the two pizzas I'd stacked on his desk.

"Pizza! Excellent. You boys will join me in celebrating, won't you?"

"Well, umm, actually, James and I were planning to visit Lyra Kazantzakis and bring one of the pizzas there, if that's okay with you."

"Oh, well, of course. I won't interfere if you've already made arrangements. Thanks for bringing me a pizza."

But I could hear the sinking tone in his voice, and I realized for the first time that Miles was lonely. He had few friends in New York since he spent so much time working, and he instinctively avoided crowds and parties if he could help it. I had always thought he was content in the little world he'd built up of books and coffee and long walks by himself as the sun went down, but now I wasn't so sure.

"I'll be back before midnight, Miles", I promised him as he inspected the sausage-and-mushroom pizza with feigned interest. It had been his favorite pizza-topping combination for as long as I could remember.

"Okay, then. But here, take some money for the subway. I don't want you walking home by yourself that late at night."

He reached in his pocket and handed me a five-dollar bill.

"That should be enough for Alex, too", he told me. "After all, it's the least I can do in return for this pizza."

"Thanks, Miles", I said, and Alex bobbed his head gratefully. As we made our careful way out of the office, I could hear a faint sigh from Miles behind me, and I made a mental note to spend more time with him in the next few days, no matter how okay he tried to convince me he was.


	15. Chapter 15

Lyra lived in a dingy apartment building quite a distance from campus that looked like it had seen better days. The grass in the cracks on the sidewalk grew tall and unkempt, and the yellowish-gray paint was peeling in places. Alex and I made our way up the crumbling concrete steps until we reached the third floor where she lived. Alex rapped the dull brass knocker, and the door swung open almost instantly.

"Alex!" squealed a pretty blond girl who looked like she was dressed to go out, in a short black dress, dramatic glittery makeup, and five-inch heels. She swooped down on him and planted a light kiss on each cheek, while he struggled to get away.

"Hi, Courtney", he mumbled, looking as if he would rather be anywhere else and rubbing glittery pink lip gloss off his face.

"And who's this handsome fella you brought with you?" she asked him, looking at me flirtatiously and fluttering her eyelashes.

"James", he answered, "a friend of mine."

"Nice to meet you", I stuttered, quickly dodging past her to avoid the cheek-kissing ordeal that Alex had had to go through.

"Isn't he cute?" she asked no one in particular, smiling coyly at me. I had never felt more turned-off in my life.

"Yeah, sure, Courtney", Lyra mumbled from where she sat at their dining table. "Now would you please close the door already? You're letting in cold air."

"Honestly, Lyra, stop being such a party pooper", Courtney complained as she closed the door and reached for her coat from where it was draped over the shoe rack. "See you all later. It was lovely meeting you, James!" she called as she made her way out the door, slamming it behind her. I wondered how she was able to walk in those shoes.

"Thirty dollars", Lyra muttered. "That's how much it cost me to get of her this time."

"Gosh", marveled Alex. "What poor guy did you get to put up with her?"

"Ming", she answered, going over to us to take the pizza box. "And I had to threaten to blackmail him to our Physics professor in addition to bribing him."

Alex whistled sharply as he accompanied her to the table. I went with them, mouth watering in anticipation. Kira waved at me from the tiny kitchen, where she'd been busy gathering paper plates and concocting a salad. She brought it to the table and laid out the plates, and Lyra piled some salad on Alex's plate before he could say anything.

"No complaints", she warned him. "There's not a single thing in there you don't like."

He put his hands up in a posture of defeat and piled pizza onto his plate beside the salad. We all helped ourselves to pizza and salad, and for a few minutes nothing could be heard but the sounds of contented chewing. The pay at Antonio's may have sucked, but the employee discount sure made up for a lot. The pizza was excellent, rolled thin enough to fold in half sandwich-style, the crust flavored with a tantalizing mixture of herbs I couldn't identify.

Lyra wiped sauce off her chin with a napkin and pointedly handed one to Alex, who had just been about to use his sleeve. It was amusing to watch the way she fussed over him and he just put up with it.

"So Kira brought me your records, James", she began. "And let me tell you, that school has no business keeping the kind of information they do on their students. They had an entire sub-file on Miles under 'psychological triggers', godsdamnit! I mean, seriously, Miles. He's like the most normal person I know. What kind of psychological trigger could he possibly provoke?"

She rolled her eyes melodramatically and I couldn't help but smile.

"My psychological evaluations probably made them keep a closer watch on me", I told her.

"Don't get me started. I had to fill out your post-survey student mental health form the first time I read one of your evaluations, and I knew you were treating the whole thing like some kind of sick joke."

"The entire school is some kind of sick joke", Alex informed her.

She raised her glass of ginger ale.

"I'll drink to that."

Looking at the sisters side by side, I was struck by how different they were. I didn't notice it as much when seeing them separately, but now the differences were blatantly obvious. It was the little things, like the way Lyra's napkin, cup, and fork were sprawled out in a haphazard array, while Kira's were neatly placed close to her and took up as little space as possible. The way Lyra was never completely still, while Kira never made a movement that wasn't necessary. The way Lyra stood out in a crowd, with her purple-streaked hair and green-framed glasses; while Kira blended in seamlessly. The way Lyra's warm amber eyes looking at me made me feel at ease, while Kira's darkly flashing gaze pierced like a weapon. Even the way Lyra's slight English accent seemed to intensify when she was annoyed impressed on me the difference between the two sisters. You wouldn't know at the time whether Kira was annoyed with you at all, until you woke up the next morning in only your underwear, with everything you owned stolen.

Lyra had finished her meal first and was setting up her laptop while the rest of us finished eating.

"How come you can use technology without any problems?" I asked her, remembering what Alex had told me earlier about demigods and technology being a dangerous mix.

"Godly immunity", Lyra answered with a smile. "Since I'm using it to exercise one of the gifts my godly parent gave me, hacking, I'm shielded. It would be the same if Alex downloaded music editing software. He could use it just fine, since music is one of his godly abilities."

"Thanks, Lyra. I wasn't sure you noticed', Alex replied with a cheeky grin.

"Stop fishing for compliments, you shameless moron."

"Wow. 'Shameless moron'. I'll have to remember that to use on James."

She snorted.

"Good luck finding an opportunity. James is, like, the least showy person I know."

"You don't know that many people, do you?"

"Talk to the hand, Callahan", she answered, sticking out her hand as her eyes locked onto the screen. "They've changed the passwords again. Gods of Olympus, I hate this school. I've hacked into military facilities with less security than this."

"How many digits?" Kira asked.

"Six."

"Hmm…try 112867."

Lyra typed in the sequence, and the screen flashed its approval. We were in.

"How did you figure that out?" I asked Kira, astounded.

She smiled a little.

"They've been using the birthdates of the staff in a rotating order since the beginning of this semester. Today was apparently Dr. Lazarov's turn."

"And you know Dr. Lazarov's birthdate how?"

She fixed me with a look of scorn, and I lifted my hands and bowed my head in an expression of defeat.

"Right. Stupid question."

We gathered around Lyra's laptop, leaving our plates and the empty pizza box abandoned on the other side of the table. Lyra had pulled up a copy of my birth certificate and was making some notes on a blue post-it note in handwriting that rivaled Alex's for illegibility.

"Here's where I started", she told us, "hoping that James' mom would leave some kind of trace. But nope, this tells us nothing. Only that five months after you were born, James, she got your birth certificate altered to remove the name 'Nicholas Groff' from the line labeled 'Father' and replaced it with 'Miles Morgan'. Incidentally, they got your eye color wrong here and on your driver's license, too. I mean, seriously, brown?"

"They don't have 'dishwater-color' listed as an option", I informed her.

"Please. Even 'gray' or 'green' would be more accurate than brown."

"Can we please stay on topic?" Kira asked, exasperated. "I know you have confidence in Ming's abilities, Lyra, but we also know that Courtney has the attention span of a hyperactive hummingbird, and he's not really her typical brainless jock kind of date, so let's finish all the illegal stuff before she gets back, okay?"

"Stop underestimating Ming", Lyra told her. "But yes, point taken. So I looked up this Nicholas Groff guy, and it turns out he's a psychiatrist whose practice is located in Princeton, New Jersey. He's married to a Laura Davies, and they have two kids. Interestingly enough, there are no divorce papers in his records."

"That's because he never married my mom", I said, a lump tightening in my throat. My own father, who had never tried to contact his son even though we were only a train ride apart, had apparently moved on with his life just fine. I hated him.

"So I cross-referenced Nicholas Groff's name with all the other listings I thought he might show up in. Congratulations, James, your biological father is not involved with the Irish mob, the Russian mob, the Mexican drug cartel, or any other sketchy organizations. But get this, I found him on the enrollment lists for Camp Half-Blood thirty years ago."

She met my blank expression with an incredulous look on her face.

"You two haven't told him about Camp Half-Blood yet?" she asked Kira and Alex.

They shook their heads and tried not to look at each other.

"In our defense", Alex ventured, "It never came up in conversation."

"Excuses, excuses", Lyra dismissed his remark. "Well, James, Camp Half-Blood is a safe place for demigods to learn battle skills and stuff, not too far from here. Some demigods stay there all year long, especially the kids of the more powerful gods, but others, like Alex and Kira, are considered harmless if they stay in the mortal world."

"You're telling me my dad was a demigod," I said, dumbfounded. Somehow I hadn't considered the possibility that demigods could be scumbags just like the rest of humanity. The thought depressed me.

" _Is_ a demigod", Lyra informed me. "Nicholas Groff is a son of Ares, the god of war."

Alex burst out laughing.

"Wait. This is priceless", he spurted out between laughs. "You're telling me that an Ares kid is a psychiatrist? What, does he specialize in anger management or something?"

"Alex, please. At least try to act your age."

"Sorry, sorry. It's just, this is just too good."

Lyra continued after giving him a withering glare.

"I kept looking through the enrollment lists to see if I could find anything else", she continued. "And I came across this from the year Nicholas became head counselor of the Ares cabin."

She pulled up a document on the screen that had one line highlighted in green.

"Look at the name, James."

I looked where she had highlighted, and my head started reeling.

"Stephanie Ryland", Kira gasped. "Oh my gods."

"Daughter of Aphrodite, the goddess of love," Lyra went on. "No wonder they were attracted to each other."

I vaguely recalled that Aphrodite had cheated on her husband with Ares. I wondered what kind of destiny that made for me, having love and war, as it were, intertwined in my makeup.

Alex looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.

"Wow, James", he marveled. "It doesn't often happen that two demigods live long enough to have a kid. I bet you've got all sorts of cool abilities you haven't even realized."

"That'd really be something", I agreed, still trying to mentally process the fact.

Lyra pulled up another image onto the screen.

"I tried to use facial recognition on your mom's photo, the one we found the other day. Apparently, this picture matches six separate fake identities, and that's just the ones that the system recognized."

She pulled up an image of six different passport photos. Although the hair and eye colors, and in one case, a facial blemish, were different between them, I could still recognize my mother's face.

"That's her all right", I said. "And it looks like she's been changing identities every couple of years."

Lyra nodded, staring at the screen. Her brow was furrowed in concentration.

"What I don't understand is why she went through all that trouble", she finally said. "I couldn't find any evidence of any of her aliases being discovered or otherwise rendered useless. There's no reason she needed to change them at that pace."

"Maybe she was just taking some precautions", Alex offered, but Lyra shook her head, dissatisfied.

"This is caution bordering on paranoia", she told him. "This is the kind of move you make if you think you're in constant danger of being tracked down and killed or something."

"Miles did mention that she was afraid of my father", I remembered, "And that he was abusive. Do you think—"

"No. Highly unlikely", Lyra interrupted. "She might have been worried that he'd find her, but this is way overkill. Remember, James, I had to run this through CIA-grade facial recognition to yield results, and even then, all I got was fake aliases."

We stayed like that for quite some time, looking at the pictures on the screen and wondering what game my mom was playing at. I felt unexpectedly sad for her as I looked over the passport photos. Though she was smiling in every single one, her smile never reached her eyes, which looked tense and lonely. I tried to get into her head, to figure out why she would keep changing her identity, keep running from whatever it was she feared. It was hopeless. I had no idea who she was, much less her motivation for doing anything.

A brisk rapping on the door jarred us all back into reality.

"That idiot Courtney forgot her key again", Lyra huffed as she closed her laptop and went to open the door.

Kira started clearing the table, and Alex and I went to help her. Apparently, that was all the information we were going to get tonight, and it left me with more questions than answers in my head.


	16. Chapter 16

Alex and I didn't talk much on the subway on our way home. He seemed to sense that I needed time to process all the new information Lyra had given us, and, uncharacteristically for him, he didn't pester. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I was related to not one, but two, ancient Greek gods. After learning about the existence of demigods from Kira, I thought I could believe anything, but I found that I could still be shocked.

Alex reluctantly stood up when we reached his subway stop, which was one stop before mine.

"And I had just gotten comfortable, too", he muttered as he raked his fingers through his perpetually messy hair. "Well, see you tomorrow, James."

"See you."

I stepped off the subway a couple minutes later and started on the short walk home. The sky was completely dark and the stars were shining brightly. I could see the light in Miles' office and could almost make out his shadowy figure standing at the window, waiting for me to come home. I felt a lump in my throat and I hastily swallowed it down. Miles. The one constant in this crazy mess that my life had become. I kept my eyes on the lighted window as I quickened my steps. The chilling wind spurred me on, numbing and blistering my skin.

Inside the office building, the lobby was deserted. Helen, the lady at the front desk, smiled at me as I entered and bent back over her computer screen. I smiled back as I walked to the elevators. Helen alone of the people who worked in the office building knew that Miles' office doubled as our home, but she was happy to keep our secret. In return, Miles had done her taxes for free, even though tax law wasn't really his specialty and she kept telling him he didn't have to do anything to buy her silence. I had heard both of them ranting about the astronomical costs of living in New York City while Miles punched numbers into his calculator and somehow shifted figures around until Helen had to pay two hundred dollars less than she would have otherwise. Looking back on it now, I wondered if Miles' being a son of Hermes had anything to do with how well he was able to play the system.

I stepped off the elevator and made my way down the long corridor that led to the office. Miles had the door open before I could knock and flashed me a tired smile that nevertheless made his eyes crinkle up merrily.

"James", he greeted me, motioning me into the office.

He had made some effort to tidy up while I was gone. Most of his piles of papers were now arranged in short stacks on his desk, with a taller stack placed right next to his sleeping bag with his glasses perched on top. The blinds were closed over the windows, hiding Miles' complicated notes and diagrams, and the pizza box rested on the short, squat filing cabinet that we referred to as the "coffee table".

"Did you get enough to eat?" he asked, as he started towards the pizza box.

I nodded. Food was the last thing on my mind right now.

"Plenty. Don't bother to open the box."

"Very well."

He sat down at the edge of his sleeping bag and looked up at me expectantly. Without his glasses perched on his nose, his face looked curiously naked and his dark-lashed eyes looked enormous.

I sat down cross-legged facing him on my sleeping bag and shrugged.

"Lyra ran facial recognition on my mom and came up with six separate fake identities", I blurted out. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, using the time to collect my thoughts. "And apparently she was a daughter of Aphrodite."

Miles sucked in his breath sharply, a startled expression making his grey eyes look colorless for just a moment.

"I had no idea", he murmured, his normally pale face as white as a sheet of paper. He had a lost look in his eyes, and he seemed to be looking beyond me at something only he could see. I decided to let it go for the moment and move on.

"She also found my biological father. Nicholas Groff, a psychiatrist and a son of Ares."

That jolted him back to reality. He shook his head rapidly, blinking as his eyes refocused.

"Say that again? A son of Ares is a psychiatrist? Huh."

I could see that he was struggling not to smile. Even so, the corner of his mouth couldn't help twitching.

"That's basically what Alex said", I told him. "He seemed to think it was hilarious."

"I guess it is, in a twisted sort of way", Miles conceded.

He opened his mouth as if to add something, but thought better of it and closed it again. I waited, but he just shook his head disbelievingly and sighed.

"Well?" I prodded. I couldn't stand the silence.

He shrugged and shoved his glasses onto his face.

"It's a lot to take in all at once", he said. "I don't know what to say. I don't want to tell you it's all going to work out, because I don't know if it will. And I don't want to tell you what to do either. I have no idea what you should do."

"Neither do I", I replied, looking into his eyes. I saw weariness and pain in them, and I knew not to push. Miles was closer to the breaking point than he seemed.

"I'm sorry, James", he murmured.

"For what?"

"For everything. For this whole convoluted mess I got you into."

I laughed ruefully.

"I'm pretty sure I did a good job of getting myself into it."

He gave a small smile and didn't disagree.

"I want to find her, Miles", I told him. "I know you tried before, but I have to do this."

"You're asking for heartbreak, James. Heartbreak and disappointment and frustration. Dead ends and fake leads and false hope and the whole impossible package."

"I know", I assured him. "I know it'll be hard and frustrating and I might not succeed. But what else can I do? Like, if I found out all this information and didn't at least try, I don't think I could live with myself."

He nodded, and I knew he understood.

"I'm not going to try to keep you from it", he said. "In fact, I might have something that'll help you with your search. Just, please, don't expect me to get any more involved than that."

He paused to swallow a lump in his throat.

"The last time I tried looking for Stephanie", he told me in a hoarse, ragged voice, "I almost fell apart. If your Nona hadn't grabbed me by the shoulders one night and yelled at me to stop raising hell and start raising you properly instead, I probably would've gone insane."

"Nona always knows what to say."

"Yeah", he snorted. "But I'm warning you, James—"

"Alright, alright", I interrupted. "Consider me warned. Now what was that you were saying about something that could help me out with this?"

"Something that _will_ help you out with this", he corrected, standing up and walking over to the filing cabinet. He rifled through the bottom drawer and finally removed a thick green folder that had bits of paper sticking out.

"You filed it away like any other case?" I asked him, incredulous.

"Oh yeah".

He sat down next to me and opened the folder slowly, reverently. His hand smoothed down the papers slowly. There were dozens of them inside, marked all over with different-colored highlighters and annotated with Miles' blocky, black handwriting. Paper-clipped to the edge of the middle sheaf of papers was a series of photos of all sizes, from wallet-sized prints to full-sized pages. These he unclipped and spread out in front of us on the floor.

They were pictures of Stephanie, mostly, though many of them had Miles in them as well. There was a photo strip of the two of them from when they were about sixteen, the kind you'd get from a photo booth at the mall. Miles and Stephanie looked cheerful and carefree, their faces contorted into silly expressions in all but one of the pictures.

Miles saw where I was looking and smiled.

"She insisted we get one nice picture", he explained.

I nodded and glanced over the other photos he had laid out. Miles and Stephanie, Stephanie and Miles. Stephanie at a dance in a dramatic red dress, a tall, brown-haired boy smiling at her side. Miles in the shadows, looking wary and distrustful and scruffy. Twelve-year-old Stephanie surrounded by family members on Christmas morning, wild-haired and grinning in overlarge pajamas. The shadowy reflection of the photographer, an equally wild-haired Miles, was visible in the mirror that hung behind them. College-aged Stephanie on stage in a silvery dress, holding a microphone, belting out a tune at the top of her lungs. Miles backstage at a theatre with an armful of roses, his arm around Stephanie, the stage makeup still on her face. Yearbook photos of the two of them: Stephanie looking calm and poised, Miles looking bored, fidgety, and done with the whole process. And so many more.

"I'm not sure why I kept my yearbook picture too", Miles said, picking it up and turning it over in his hands.

But I had picked up another photo, which seemed to be the most recent one. Stephanie in jeans and an oversized black sweater, holding a baby in her arms, her head bent over it, her lips pressing a kiss onto its forehead.

"I took that one", Miles said quietly, looking over my shoulder. "It was just before she left for who knows where."

He sighed, fingering the rest of the papers in the folder.

"I don't envy you the task of figuring out what happened to her", he said as he handed the folder to me. "But I wish you the best of luck."

"Thanks", I replied, taking it from him. "I'll need it."


	17. Chapter 17

I woke up groggy the next morning, more tired than when I had gone to bed. I'd stayed up until almost two in the morning memorizing the 29th Homeric hymn for Dr. Lazarov's Western Civ class and poring over the folder Miles had given me. Facts and phrases, faces and clues and puzzles and calls upon the gods, all swirled together in my brain like a thick layer of the dirty, impenetrable fog I encountered so often on the streets of New York.

"Hestia, in the high dwellings of all, both deathless gods….both deathless gods and men who walk on earth…" I muttered to myself under my breath as I sloshed water into two mugs. Dr. Lazarov didn't often give us memorization assignments, but when he did, there was often a good reason behind it. _It's like having the gods on speed dial_ , I reminded myself. Unwillingly, Alex's rueful remark popped into my head as well: _You're assuming the gods are reliable._

I shrugged off the thought and focused my attention on making coffee, Miles', black as pitch and just as flavorful, mine, the color of raw umber with an obscene amount of sugar in it. It was good to know that some things would always stay the same.

Miles stirred in his sleep and mumbled something unintelligible.

"Good morning to you, too", I said softly, the corner of my mouth twitching upward.

In response, he buried his head in his squashed pillow and sighed.

"Why?" he groaned, drawing out the single word into a low growl. "Is it morning already?"

"5:42 a.m.", I answered, glancing at the portable digital clock sitting like a fat toad on Miles' desk. "You've been snoring fit to topple the walls for the past half hour."

"I don't snore", he informed me, sitting up and looking for a brief moment like a petulant child.

I handed him a mug of coffee and watched as he sipped it slowly, reverently. It always amused me how much coffee could change Miles' mood.

"Good coffee, this".

"You say that every morning."

"And I mean it every morning. Ever thought of hanging up your janitor's coveralls and becoming a barista?"

"And miss out on an extra ten bucks an hour to deal with grumpy New Yorkers at five in the morning? No thanks, Miles."

"Touché", he conceded, raising his mug to me in tribute.

I smiled behind the rim of my own mug and savored the tooth-aching sweetness of my coffee. I would miss these cold New York mornings sipping coffee while sitting in sleeping bags next year when I would be in college. If I would be in college.

"So what are your plans for today, James?" Miles asked with just a touch more hesitation in his voice than usual.

"School. Work. Homework. Maybe meet up with Alex and Kira."

"Good, good", he nodded, taking a final swig of coffee. "I'll be at the courthouse all day, so if you need anything, please ask Helen. Judge Galway's pretty keen on finishing this trial by the end of the week, so he's been keeping us overtime as long as he can."

"Tough."

I thought for a minute, and continued, in a quieter tone.

"Hey, maybe, Alex and I could swing by around six and get you dinner again. We could all eat at the courthouse if you'd like."

He smiled and looked less tired for a moment.

"I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."

I took his empty mug and stood up, stretching my neck from side to side to relieve the stiffness I felt.

"Well, so long, Miles. I've got to go open up the school. Harley's on vacation in Hawaii."

"Lucky Harley."

Harley Warren was the senior custodian at Grantham Lab School, which basically made him my boss. But it might have been fairer to say that I was his boss. Unofficially. What I mean is, the guy was only too glad to let me have my way and tell him what to do. Harley was perfectly content to plod along, doing the same old things over and over again. Which was why I didn't believe him at first when he said he was going to Hawaii.

"Yeah. But I bet you anything Harley's gonna come back with the top of his head sunburnt and with complaints about mosquitoes and tourists this time of year."

The thinning fringe of gray curls that surrounded Harley's rapidly balding head would do little to protect him from the Hawaiian sun.

Miles laughed silently, throwing his shoulders and head back, quaking without making a sound.

"I'd pay to see that."

"Yeah, you would. See you at the courthouse, Miles."

"Till then."


	18. Chapter 18

As I approached the school building to unlock the doors, Alex and Kira seemed to be having an argument that required a lot of broad gestures on his part and head-shaking on hers.

"Oh boy. What fun", I muttered under my breath as I walked towards them.

Kira turned her deadly gaze onto me. Her eyes flashed like dark onyx stones in her face, and the dark braid that hung over her shoulder made her look like a warrior queen.

"About time you got here. James, tell this idiot that—"

"Hold on, hold on", I interrupted. "I'm not telling anyone anything until the two of you tell me what's going on."

Alex smirked with gleeful malice, and made an exaggeratedly polite beckoning gesture to Kira.

"Please. After you".

Kira rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. Alex seemed to know all the right buttons to press to wear her down to her last nerve. It was a special talent of his.

"Callahan here", she began in a sarcastic tone, pointing at him before resuming her confrontational stance, "from the goodness of his heart, no doubt, decided that it would be a good idea to get Chiron in on this."

She noticed the blank look on my face, and sighed in exasperation.

"Chiron. Chiron, the centaur who's been training Greek heroes since who knows when."

"You're kidding."

"Do I kid?"

"Well, no. Not that I know of, anyway."

I quickly looked away and inadvertently met Alex's eyes. They were pulsing with manic energy. Every hair on his head seemed to spark with electricity, and the slight smile on his face was tight and unfocused.

"Isn't this a good idea, though?" I ventured hesitantly. "I mean, if this Chiron guy's been training heroes for multiple millennia, it'll probably be a piece of cake for him to help us track down one missing demigod."

"I can't believe you're taking his side!" Kira seethed, turning away from the two of us in disgust.

"I'm desperate, okay?" I answered her, turning my body to face her. I heard myself raising my voice even though I didn't mean to. "I have nothing concrete, Kira. Absolutely nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. At this point, I'll grab hold of anything I can get."

"A wise decision", Alex lauded, placing his hand on my shoulder. He had been silent and still for the past few minutes, very unlike his usual obnoxiously talkative self.

"You can't do it all on your own, Kira", he chided her. "With Chiron in the loop, we've got the entire camp's resources on our side. Surely someone knows something about Stephanie or Nicholas. Which, might I add, is more than we know."

"Don't you tell me what I can and can't do", she said in a dangerously quiet tone. "To be honest, I'm not even all that mad that you told Chiron. He was going to find out anyway, sooner or later. What I can't stand is how you said nothing, absolutely nothing, about it to the rest of us, like our opinions didn't matter. Because apparently they don't, not to you."

Alex started to say something, but abruptly shut his mouth and clenched his jaw.

"You're right", he finally admitted through clenched teeth. "So I guess I'm sorry."

Kira looked to the heavens incredulously, then back at Alex.

"An apology from a son of Apollo? I'll take it."

I let out a sigh of relief. It was good to know that the storm was over, even if electricity still hung in the air around us.

"So where do we go from here?" I asked, looking from one face to another. Alex's expression was a curious mixture of exultant and subdued, while Kira looked calm and composed. She didn't have the usual piercing gaze in her eyes that made her look like a weapon. Right at the moment, she looked like a normal girl, a beautiful normal girl, a girl I might have actually gone up and talked to if I didn't know any better. I forced myself to think of something else as I felt a blush rising in my cheeks.

"Nowhere", she answered. "You have to unlock the building, and all of us have to suffer through another day as lab rats—excuse me, I meant 'students'. After school, we're going to Long Island Sound to meet Chiron and hear what he has to say."

"I was planning to meet Miles at the courthouse with Alex at about six, though", I told her.

Alex grinned and looked more like his normal self.

"That's the first I've heard of it", he said as he nudged me with his elbow.

"Consider it an invitation, buddy", I answered him, grinning myself.

"Consider your invitation RSVP'd, buddy", he replied, playfully punching me.

"Consider me totally over you two's budding bromance, 'buddies'", Kira huffed as she shoved her way past us, probably to pick the lock open out of impatience. But I thought I could see the hint of a smile on her face as she passed me.


	19. Chapter 19

After school, the three of us met as if by mutual agreement at the bench where we had parted that morning. It had been a useless day at school, as usual. The teachers were either frazzled, unprepared, overambitious, or, in the case of Dr. Lazarov, depressed even before class started. I was glad to escape the school building and the fog of weariness that seemed to rise from it the way steam rises from a hot drink. By the looks on Alex and Kira's faces, their days hadn't gone any better than my own.

"I can't stay", I immediately blurted out when I was within hearing range. "I have to go clean up the building. I've been doing such a crap job lately that dealing with the accumulated mess could take a while."

"Skip it", Kira pleaded. "Or just go ahead and do a crap job one more time. Please. We won't have enough time otherwise, if you want to be back by six."

"C'mon, James. Just this once", Alex added when I hesitated, for once in agreement with Kira about something. "I'll help when we get back", he offered.

"Me too", said Kira, although I could detect the reluctance in her voice.

"Don't feel like you have to", I told her. "It's not exactly a glamorous job."

"I'm not exactly a glamorous girl. I'll do it. Now let's go."

We followed her across the intersection and made our way to the subway station. It was one of those gorgeous winter days that seems to be a day left over from autumn, with a crisp wind blowing and the pale sun shining brightly.

The walk to the subway station was all too short. None of us said much, but the silence was somehow charged with all that remained unspoken. Alex and Kira would glace at each other tentatively from time to time, but never when the other one happened to be looking. It was almost entertaining to watch.

Once we reached the station, Alex insisted on paying for all our tickets.

"Please. I'm the one making the big bucks here", I protested. "And it's my mom we're trying to find out about. So step aside, Alex, I'm paying."

He made a feeble protest and pretended to block my way, but I could tell he was pleased. Alex couldn't afford to be quite as free with his money as he would have liked us to believe.

I plunked down a few bills before he could change his mind, and a few minutes later, we entered a crowded subway car heading for Long Island. Kira flashed the evil eye at a college student who hastily got out of her way, leaving us with two seats open on the car, into which Alex and Kira immediately plopped themselves before someone else could. I opted to stand next to them and hold on to one of the subway car's supporting poles, nodding apologetically to the college student who was now standing beside me.

"So what's he like?" I asked the two of them in a quiet tone. The college student had headphones on, but I wasn't taking any chances. "Chiron, I mean."

The two of them looked at each other as if trying to decide on a helpful way to describe him.

"He's a lot like Dr. Lazarov, actually", said Alex thoughtfully. "Like Dr. Lazarov if Dr. Lazarov wasn't depressed and disillusioned. And sarcastic. And rude. And Russian."

"What exactly does that leave, Alex?" Kira asked him, exasperated.

But I thought I understood what Alex was getting at. Underneath his crusty exterior, Dr. Lazarov really seemed to think the subject he taught was important and worth learning, and he did his best to help his students learn. Even though he was branded as a tyrant in the classroom and a slave driver when it came to assignments, I couldn't think of one student who actually disliked him. Except maybe Meredith. And I admitted to myself then that Meredith's dislike of him was probably something else in Dr. Lazarov's favor, at least to me.

"He's a teacher, first and foremost", Kira said. "I guess you just can't escape it after centuries of training heroes. He'll probably treat you to his 'Western Civilization and the gods' speech. Huh, come to think of it, he really is a lot more like Dr. Lazarov than you'd think at first."

Alex made a smug I-told-you-so face that Kira chose to conveniently ignore.

"What speech?" I asked.

"Do you want to do it?" Kira asked Alex. "I know you work on your Chiron impersonation when we're supposed to be studying hand-to-hand combat in the arena."

"You know hand-to-hand's never been my style", he countered.

"Archers", she said, dismissing an entire class of warfare with the way she muttered the word.

"Don't diss on archery", Alex chastised her. "I thought you were a big fan of Artemis and the Hunters. Well, news flash, Kira, every single one of those girls is an archer."

She rolled her eyes at him, and he grinned. I cleared my throat impatiently, and they both turned to me.

"The speech?" I prodded.

"Yes, well", Alex loudly cleared his throat and resumed in a deeper voice that was lightly graced with the vowels of the British royal family. "Western Civilization, James. Do you really think it's just a concept, made up by historians long ago as a convenient label to describe everything around them? No. Western Civilization, the heart of the west, these are real things. And the gods, they are just as real. They've moved with the heart of the West, wherever the flame burns brightest. Rome. Britain. Spain and Italy, for some time. And now, America."

Kira and I applauded him heartily. Alex had a gift for impressions. With a furrow of his brow, a pursing of his lips, slightly straighter posture, and a slightly slower speed of talking, he had become a completely different person for a few moments.

"He sounds like quite a guy", I told them once the clapping had died down.

"That would be an understatement", Kira replied. The college guy started backing away from us towards the other end of the subway car, trying not to make it obvious what he was doing. Kira gave him a perfunctory glance and smirked in his general direction. He gave up trying to hide what he was hiding and stumbled across to the other side, avoiding eye contact with any of us.

"Apparently you're intimidating", Alex said to Kira, which I thought was kind of redundant.

"When I try to be."

"Is that a Hermes thing?"

"I think it's just a Kazantzakis thing, actually. Lyra can be positively terrifying when she wants to be."

"Oh, trust me, I know."

"Ha. You haven't seen anything yet. She goes easy on you because she likes you, you know."

Alex snorted.

"You're kidding, right? She's always threatening me."

"Because she likes you."

"Right."

I smiled to myself as I heard their bickering. Unlike the earlier arguments that seemed to practically be verbal combat, this casual back-and-forth reminded me more of lazy sunbeams and shadows traveling across the floor of a room as the sun moved across the sky.

Sooner than I had expected, we stepped off the subway car into a sunlit world that seemed as remote from New York City as New York City was from Georgia. In the distance I could make out rolling green hills and what looked like a series of Greek ruins transplanted into the middle of a strawberry farm. Welcoming us on the hillside stood a gigantic statue of a Greek goddess, looming above us forty feet into the air. Across from it a glimmer of gold shone from the branches of the tallest pine tree. I nearly tripped over my own feet when I realized what it was.

"That can't be—the Golden Fleece? _The_ Golden Fleece? But how?"

"Magic. Duh." Alex replied, obviously enjoying my bafflement.

It took me a moment to realize that he wasn't joking. In this alternate universe that somehow existed within Long Island Sound, magic was real and alive, integral to preserve the balance of life. I felt like I was dreaming, and yet I simultaneously felt more awake than ever. It was as if the hustle and bustle of New York City was the dream, and this was the reality.

"This place is incredible", I marveled, swiveling my head back and forth to take it all in like an oscillating fan turning from side to side.

Kira smiled to herself and tried to hide it, but she didn't say anything. I noticed that her normally light olive skin had gone several shades paler, and uncertainty loomed in the depths of her eyes. I sensed that this place held a whole host of memories for her, not all of them good.

"You okay?" I asked her under my breath, out of Alex's hearing.

She nodded, but I wasn't convinced. I was almost sure that inside the pockets of her army jacket, her fists were clenched. Her lips were pale, and her dark eyes were unfocused as she made her way to what looked like a doorway to nowhere. Two ancient-looking Greek pillars stood the width of a doorway apart, with a thin slab of marble on top connecting them like the top of a doorframe.

"The entrance to Camp Half-Blood", Alex proclaimed grandly as he gestured towards it like a millionaire welcoming me to his penthouse. "Normally, only demigods can get through, but you never know. You might not get shocked if you try to cross."

"Well, that's comforting", I muttered, envying Alex and Kira as they effortlessly stepped through the doorway and stared back at me expectantly.

I took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold. Tentatively, I released the breath, not realizing that I had been holding it in. Nothing happened.

We made our way to an open central area that had picnic tables arranged around what looked like a central fire pit.

"Alright. No turning back now", Kira said, and I wondered whether she was telling me or reminding herself. "Now they have to help us, no matter what."

She eased herself onto a white marble bench and looked marginally calmer. She brushed back a wavy, dark lock of hair that had escaped her braid, and I could see that some of the color had returned to her face.

"Why's that?" I asked her.

"The hearth", she answered, her eyes fastened on it. "The sacred dwelling of Hestia and a zone of protection. In Ancient Greece, if you could make it to the central hearth of a city or even of a house, the people in it were obligated to provide you with food, protection, or whatever else you needed. You could be from an enemy country in the middle of a bloody battle, but if you made it to the hearth, you were a guest and you had rights. Camp Half-Blood works like that too, even today. And we've just made it to the hearth."

I looked around at the dancing flames of the hearth, the solid tables, the warm, sunlit benches, pristine and gleaming. Even though I had never been there before, it felt like home. It felt familiar and good and right. For a moment, I wished that I could stop time and stretch out that moment into days and weeks and years.

"It's a good custom", I said, more to myself than to either of them.

Alex nodded.

"Thank you. I've always thought so", came a deep voice behind us.

I turned and found myself facing a massive centaur. Even though I had known what to expect, more or less, from Alex and Kira's description, I was still taken aback at the sight of Chiron. He had brown hair and brown eyes, a bushy brown beard, and generally looked like your typical high school teacher, or at a stretch, a tweedy college English professor. Until you noticed his back half, of course. Chiron's waist ended in the massive white body of a full-grown stallion, complete with hooves that could probably knock out a full-grown man with a well-aimed kick. He was the picture of restrained strength, of controlled power, of refined ruggedness. I immediately thought of him as the anti-Lazarov. Where Dr. Lazarov's life struggles had made him hard and disillusioned, the look in Chiron's dark eyes was soft, filled with wisdom and sorrow and unrealized hopes and sympathy. There was a curious gravity in his expression and stance, as if he was consciously holding himself apart so he could see all parts of a situation. I got the distinct feeling that Chiron, like Miles, held himself above the petty quarrels that so many people got themselves tangled themselves up in. There was something unearthly about him.

"You must be James", he rumbled in that deep voice, extending his hand to me in welcome.

I took it and grasped it firmly. Despite his imposing stature, Chiron made me feel at ease.

"It's an honor to meet you, sir", I told him, relieved that I could still speak normally around this figure straight out of Greek mythology.

"The honor and the pleasure are mine", he replied with a smile that crinkled the corners of his deep-set eyes. Of course he would be courteous. I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before.

"It's so nice to meet a polite demigod", he continued, removing his hand. "They seem to be a rare breed in this degenerate age—and getting rarer." Here he glanced at Alex and Kira, and a faint smile curled his lip.

Kira immediately looked away, but Alex grinned back at him impishly. Once again, I was struck by how different his subtle glance was from Dr. Lazarov's blunt, rough ways. Dr. Lazarov making the same complaint would probably sound like, "Stop being rude and act like you grew up with common sense, you idiot." To myself, I admitted that Alex's response would probably be the same both ways. Kira, I wasn't so sure about.

"Well, I know we have a lot to discuss and not much time to do it in", Chiron said. "Won't you come with me to the Big House? I'm sure we could be much more comfortable there. And unless I'm mistaken, Mr. Callahan here has some need of the facilities."

It took me a moment to realize that he was referring to the bathrooms. Alex nodded gratefully and immediately started following Chiron down the hill. I could see the big house mentioned, not exactly a mansion, but almost the size. It was painted blue with white trim, and it did look like a comfortable, inviting sort of place. Kira and I followed the two of them. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was coming home at last after far too long.


	20. Chapter 20

Inside the Big House, the living room was overgrown with wild vines. A ferociously realistic-looking stuffed leopard's head glowered at us from one wall, which I thought was kind of inconsistent with my mental picture of Chiron's taste.

"The work of the god Dionysus", he said, following my bewildered gaze with some amusement. "He thought it would be a good idea to turn my living room into a vineyard, and to charm poor Seymour alive. What kind of life, I can't imagine."

"You mean that thing is alive?"

The leopard growled in response, eying me the way I'd eye a steak sandwich. I took a careful step away from the wall. No use in taking unnecessary risks.

Chiron motioned us over to the selection of overstuffed chairs and couches. Alex sank into a chintzy orange armchair that seemed to swallow him up as soon as he sat down. Kira perched tentatively on the arm of the navy serge couch. At a look from Chiron, she pursed her lip and sat down on the cushion instead of the arm.

Chiron settled himself in a heap on the fluffy powder-blue rug and turned to face me expectantly.

"Now, James, how can I help you out?"

I started to speak, but then I closed my mouth. What was I supposed to tell him? The facts and mysteries of the past couple of days swirled around in my mind and made me dizzy.

"Come on, lad", Chiron prodded gently. "As Cato, the famous statesman once said, "Master the facts; the words will follow."

"That's just where my problem is", I blurted out to him. "The facts are so unbelievable; I'm not sure where to start."

"Try me", he replied quietly. "Unbelievable truths make life worth living, after all. Where would we be without the possibility of the impossible?"

"In a much saner place, no doubt", Alex mumbled from the depths of the armchair, where he sat tossing Snausages to an enthusiastic Seymour the leopard head.

"I'll try to lay it out for you", I told him, ignoring Alex for the time being. "A couple days ago, I found out that the man I had thought of as my dad for seventeen years was actually not related to me at all. Apparently my mom, who's a daughter of Aphrodite, by the way, gave me into his safekeeping when she couldn't deal with her life anymore. She's gone now, and all she left is a bunch of fake identities that not even CIA-grade software could penetrate. My dad is apparently a son of Ares, and he's set up a psychiatry practice a train ride away in Princeton, yet he's never tried to contact the son who's been missing in action for seventeen years. Oh, and it turns out my legal guardian Miles is a son of Hermes, Alex is a son of Apollo, and Kira is a daughter of Hermes too. And I have my suspicions about my Western Civ teacher too."

"Ilya?" Chiron asked, amused. "No, he's no demigod, just a, how would you say, a 'hopeless wannabe'?"

Alex burst out laughing, throwing his head back and crowing to the ceiling. Even Kira cracked a grin, although it vanished as soon as she realized what she was doing.

"Why would anyone want to be a demigod?" he marveled.

"It's like a one-way ticket to instant death", Kira agreed.

"Children, please", Chiron chided, but he was smiling under his bushy beard, and his eyes were twinkling merrily. "Many people wish for all sorts of stupid things they haven't really thought through."

He turned to me again, and the merriment slowly drained out of the eyes, leaving them looking older than the world and twice as alive.

"Ilya Lazarov's story is a sad one, I'm afraid. His younger brother, Andrei, is a son of Athena, the goddess of battle and wisdom. When Andrei came of age and started displaying the gifts Athena had given him, Ilya decided he wanted some of that for himself. He wasted much of his life seeking out the blessing of the goddess, but when she finally appeared to him at the Parthenon in Athens, she brushed off his request. She told him that he had trusted too long in the wisdom of men to receive the wisdom of the gods. Ilya took that to mean she didn't think he was good enough for her. He's been living with a knot of hate and inadequacy in his heart since then."

"That actually explains a lot", I replied, remembering the cynical droop in Dr. Lazarov's eyes, the way he suspected everyone's motives and was never late in calling people out on their stupidity. In the absence of a supernatural gift, Ilya Lazarov had honed his mind until it was as blindingly brilliant as a weapon. And just as sharp and cutting.

"Indeed', Chiron agreed, nodding at me with approval. I felt like I had just passed a test I didn't know I was taking. The feeling set me on edge.

"But we're not here to talk about Ilya", he continued. "We're here to help you, James. And I do believe I have something that can do just that."

"You do?" Alex blurted out, springing up instantly from his mound of cushions and fuzzy orange upholstery. "Then what in the name of Mercury's underpants are we waiting for? Come on, people, get up, let's go! Get up, get up!"

"Alex, please", Chiron chided, placing a hand on his shoulder and holding him down gently but firmly.

"Sorry, sorry", he mumbled. "I guess I got carried away."

"You think?" Kira scoffed from her place on the couch. Her braid had come halfway undone, and dark tendrils framed her tired face, making her look more relaxed than usual. With her head resting in her hand and the sarcastic little smile on her face, she somehow looked more attractive than ever. I hastily turned my face away as I felt it growing warm. Why did she have this effect on me?

"Follow me, children." Chiron rose from his place on the rug, his legs untangling and stretching like an elaborate knot being untied. I wondered how he stayed twisted like that without his limbs all falling asleep.

We followed him single-file down the narrow hallway: Alex in front, bouncing on the balls of his feet, Kira following at a more sedate pace, and me bringing up the rear and trying not to think about the way Kira's hips swung when she walked and the way her long, dark hair shone as it hung down her back.

The walls of the hallway were plastered with pictures of famous demigods, from newspaper clippings to glossy magazine glamour shots. I thought I recognized a few familiar faces, actors and celebrities that I hadn't realized were demigods before.

"No way", I breathed as I sighted a picture of Miles, standing in front of the courthouse with his arms folded, grinning for the camera. He looked confident and proud, ready to take on the world. In the black-and-white newspaper photo, you couldn't see the tired lines around his eyes or the graying of his temples. This was Miles at his best.

"Ah. Miles Morgan." Chiron glanced back at me and smiled. "One of my favorite demigods. A true hero in every sense of the word. One of the few children of Hermes I would trust with valuables. Or anything else, for that matter." He smiled at me, and I smiled back.

At the end of the hallway, Chiron opened the door and entered a small, cluttered office. More pictures and newspaper clippings adorned the walls, and piles of dusty papers dotted the corners of the room. It reminded me a little of Miles' office in the city. You could sense the same caliber of genius at work, too busy to be bothered by such a thing as clutter.

"Our records are all kept here", Chiron explained, gesturing towards a series of filing cabinets that would've made Miles' heart happy.

"Alex explained some of this to me in his initial Iris-message", he told me, which didn't really make anything clearer. "Stephanie Anne Ryland, I believe her name was?"

"Is. Her name _is_ Stephanie Anne Ryland."

"Of course, James. I didn't mean to imply that Stephanie was, uh, no longer with us. It's just that I'm aware she could be operating under an alias at the moment."

"Oh, right. Sorry, sir."

"Nonsense. Nothing to be sorry for."

He opened the second drawer of the filing cabinet on the far right and thumbed through an assortment of neatly arranged grey files.

"Ah, here we are."

He carefully removed a file and laid it out on the heavy oak desk opposite the row of cabinets. We all gathered around him, barely daring to hope, barely remembering to breathe.

"Stephanie Anne Ryland", he read as he opened the file. "Born March 29, 1967. Goes by Steph. Daughter of Aphrodite and a James Auden Ryland. Jamie. He was an actor on Broadway for some time, so apparently it runs in the family. She stayed at Camp Half-Blood every summer since she was 12. When Stephanie was 14, she met Nicholas Groff, who was almost 19 at the time, a psychology student at New York University. They spent more time together than I was comfortable with, but I was mostly just glad at the time that Stephanie was making friends. She was a bit stand-offish, and she never did get along with the petty, shallow girls in the Aphrodite cabin. And Nick seemed to be such a good influence on her. She was getting involved in camp activities, she was smiling and laughing, she had stars in her eyes and a swing in her step. She loved him, James."

"And him?" I asked. "Did he love her, too?" Somehow I felt that if I knew my father had loved my mom, he wasn't as big of a scumbag as I had thought he was.

"I think he genuinely thought he did", Chiron sighed. "But neither of them was ready for a serious relationship. Stephanie and Nick got into a huge fight over something he said about something she did—they never did tell me the details. It ended with her storming out and leaving camp two weeks early, and with dating Dane McMillan, the boyfriend Miles hated, just out of spite."

"Later on, they got back together though", I said, hoping he would continue.

"Yes", Chiron agreed. "Later on, when Stephanie left for New York, when she was all alone in a scary new city, Nick was just setting up his practice and helped her get settled in. He drove her to auditions, took her out for lunches and dinners when she couldn't afford to buy food on her own and even gave her a place to stay for a while. They almost got married at City Hall on a whim, but I convinced them to wait. I wanted Stephanie to be able to walk out whenever she needed to. I still didn't trust Nick's intentions, and already then, his manic episodes were occurring with more frequency. You see, James, your father had to bear the curse of Achilles since he was thirteen."

"The curse of Achilles?"

"The warrior's wrath that carves a path from disaster to disaster", Chiron replied. "The blinding, overpowering anger that can accomplish victory—or raze anything that stands in the way. The god Ares cursed Nick instead of claiming him as his own, because Nick rejected his parentage. He wanted so much to be a son of Apollo instead of Ares, and Ares wouldn't put up with it. He was so infuriated by Nick's turning his back on him that he cursed Nick's eldest son with the curse of Achilles as well. Probably that's why he never wanted to marry Stephanie. Nick was a tortured soul, James, hovering between periods of tranquility and uncontrollable rage he couldn't control. He wasn't made big enough to hold it all in."

"So I'm cursed", I said, realizing for the first time the awful truth of the words. My 'anger issues', as the school psychologist termed them, were really the work of a revengeful god for something I didn't even do. I didn't hate my dad anymore. I couldn't. I just felt sorry for him and for all that he could have become, if Ares hadn't decided to ruin his life.

"Yes."

Chiron looked into my eyes, and I could see the pain of a thousand years in them.

"I'm sorry, James. None of this was your fault."

"It's alright, Chiron. I'm used to it. Did Miles know?"

"Yes, he did. Stephanie told him, and he had had his suspicions. He still thought it was all Nick's fault, though. I remember him pacing up and down my office far too late at night right after Stephanie left you in his care, sobbing and screaming and asking me 'why that idiot couldn't just keep it in his pants'".

"Dang, from Miles, that's like streams of curse words", Alex marveled.

"Miles wished I was never born?" I asked in barely more than a whisper. It was too much to comprehend.

"Miles was young, inexperienced, and at his wits' end", Chiron said. "He was eating little and sleeping less, trying so hard to be father and mother to you while continuing to work full-time as a public defender, a forgotten number in the vastness that is our current justice system. He was trying to do too much on his own, and he was too proud to ask for help from anyone. He was slowly driving himself insane with the pressure he put himself under, James. He didn't mean what he said."

"I never realized it was so hard for him", I said, more to myself than to any of them.

"He never meant for you to", Chiron replied seriously.

I realized the truth of his words, and I immediately wished that I hadn't. Snippets of memory popped into my mind unbidden, scenes from long ago that I had since trained my brain to forget. I remembered back to when I was four years old and we were living in a trailer park out in the middle of nowhere. I woke up in the middle of the night to the guttural sounds of Miles crying his heart out as he paced up and down the narrow length of the mobile home. He didn't know that I was awake. I made sure he never knew. I remember flying into a rage when I was six years old and feeling ferocity I couldn't control or understand. Miles wouldn't let me go somewhere or do something that I had wanted, so I threw a tantrum and tried to pummel him with my skinny six-year-old fists. He had grasped my hands in his own, and instead of punishing me, he'd placed my hands on his chest and had drawn me into a hug. Then he'd told me in a voice little more than a whisper: "Self-destruction is not an option when there're people who need you, James." It had been the first time he'd said it. I hadn't realized then that he was talking about himself as he spoke those words.

"James, you okay?" Kira asked in a concerned voice. I was jolted back to reality and managed a feeble nod in her direction.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry." I couldn't meet her eyes.

"You're probably not going to like this, James", Chiron warned me, "But I think the best way to find your mother is through your father. We know exactly where Nick is, and it's only a train ride away."

"No. Absolutely not." I refused. "What would he know about her? He didn't even bother to try looking for her when she disappeared all those years ago. He lives in Princeton and he never did anything to find her or me."

"That's where you're wrong", Chiron said, with a grim twist to his lip. "Nick did everything he could to find her. That's how good she was at covering her tracks. He was worried, consumed with the search for Stephanie. You see, she was one of his patients at the time."

I stared at him, dumbfounded.

"Yes", he continued. "Stephanie was being treated by Nick for paranoia. She kept thinking she was being followed, stalked by random audience members watching her shows. She left him during one of her more stable periods, but no one knew how long that would last, least of all Stephanie herself."

So that explained the constant change of identities, the meticulous erasing of all information that could have helped us locate her without resorting to begging my father for help. Stephanie wasn't just cautious; she was paranoid.

"Why did he stop?" I asked.

Chiron sighed.

"It got to be too much for him. He and Miles were working together to find Stephanie for some time, even though Miles never let on that Stephanie had entrusted you into his care. I think he knew even then that Nick was not to be trusted, not completely anyway."

I remembered that Nick would often leave me with Nona and my slew of aunts and uncles when I was younger. I had been so happy to see them all that I hadn't stopped to wonder where Miles went whenever I had a sleepover at Nona's house.

Chiron continued in a husky tone, and I realized that he blamed himself for what happened next.

"Eventually, the tension between the two of them over Stephanie got to be too much. I thought they could both handle it like adults, but I hadn't counted on the tensions that unrequited love could bring. Nick and Miles got into an argument which turned into a fight. It ended up with Miles having to go to the hospital for a severe concussion and a broken collarbone, thanks to the curse of Achilles. Afterwards, Nick decided that he couldn't continue the search and stay sane. He apologized to Miles, paid his hospital bill, and then faded out of his life as efficiently as he could. He moved to Princeton, about as far as he could get from Miles, who was living in Georgia at the time."

"Except now Miles is in New York", I told him. "Did he know when he moved here that Nick was so close by?"

"I doubt it." Chiron shook his head. "The two of them lost touch after the fight, just as Nick had intended."

"And now we risk blowing it all up again."

He pursed his lip and nodded slowly.

"It's a risk we have to take, James. We have no other leads on Stephanie's whereabouts."

I realized the truth of what he was saying. I didn't have to like my dad, or even forgive him for the heartache he'd caused my mom. I just needed to pump him for information.

"Alright. I'll do it."


	21. Chapter 21

We didn't talk much on the subway ride back to the city. Kira seemed to be lost in a bubble of her own thoughts, none of them cheerful, and spent much of the time gazing blankly out the window and intimidating other passengers by sheer virtue of existing. I would have to remember to ask whether that was one of her godly abilities.

Alex, on the other hand, seemed to hone in on me with ultra-concentrated determination, staring at me keenly for any sign of a plan forming in my head. Under the blazing blue of his manic gaze, I found it hard to focus on coming up with anything resembling a coherent plan. All I could think of was that I would have to face the guy who put Miles in the hospital. The guy who made my mom disappear. The guy who brought heartache to Chiron whenever he stopped to think of him. My father.

Alex adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat expectantly. I ignored him. I was good at that.

Kira shot him a warning look, accompanied by a barely detectable shake of her head. He took the hint and stopped staring at me. Since when had they been able to communicate so well with each other? I felt an irrational stab of jealousy before I told myself to stop being stupid.

Alex and I got off at a stop near the courthouse.

"You coming with us?" I asked Kira, hoping she would.

"Sorry. Can't. I'm on Courtney duty tonight. Lyra says if she doesn't get the apartment to herself for a couple hours, she'll end up throwing Courtney off the roof."

"Fun times", Alex remarked with a poorly concealed grin.

Kira stuck out her tongue at him and made a face, looking for a moment like a disgruntled seven-year-old.

"You shut up or I'll make sure you have to put up with her next time. Since she enjoys your company _so_ much."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Please. I'd do it with a smile."

Alex clutched at his chest in mock horror.

"You heartless, heartless girl. What did I ever do to deserve this?"

"You existed?"

She fired that last parting shot as we stepped off the subway. Alex put on a deeply hurt face, but I could tell he was trying not to smile as we walked to the courthouse together.

"You're really starting to like her, aren't you?" I teased.

"Don't worry, James. I won't get in your way."

"Dude. For like the bajillionth time, there is nothing between—"

"Save it for someone who doesn't know you at all. There's definitely something there."

"You really think so?" I hadn't thought it was that obvious.

"Sure I am. The way she looks at you when she thinks you aren't looking, she's got it bad."

"You're kidding."

"No way, man. Just trust me on this one. Neither of you will ever admit it, but she's absolutely crazy about you, and you're crazy about her."

"And you're just crazy."

"Yeah, pretty much."

We strode up the steps to the courthouse and nodded at the officer posted outside the door.

"I'm James, Miles Morgan's son", I told him, and for the first time, it felt like a lie.

"And I'm Alex", said Alex in response to the officer's dubious stare. "Just along for the ride."

"Humph", he growled, fixing us both with a stony expression. "If you two make any noise, I'm kicking you out."

We rushed past him into the courthouse. Judge Oppenheimer was just wrapping up the day's proceedings with a final warning to the jury not to disclose the details of the trial. Miles looked tired and disheveled from his place at the front of the room, his black hair tousled and falling over his pale face, his glasses and tie askew. The prosecutor, Caleb Lindevaldsen, stood straight and tall and triumphant. His navy blue suit was pressed to perfection, with the perfect amount of crisp white French cuffs showing, and his blond hair was elegantly coiffed and sprayed with product. Next to Lindevalsen, Miles looked scruffy and insignificant, but you could see that he was a force to be reckoned with. Miles was the scrappy, hard-hitting nobody to Lindevaldsen's suave practiced perfection.

Miles walked down the aisle to the two of us without a backwards glance. Lindevaldsen looked after him with a smug smirk on his clean-shaven face and stroked his chin speculatively. I instantly hated him.

"James! Alex!" Miles smiled and put an arm around each of us, perking up instantly. A weight seemed to fall off his overworked shoulders. He was like a soldier coming off the battlefield, not returning home, but just to the camp, ready for another day of fighting ahead, wary still of enemy fire.

He pressed his forehead to mine briefly and grinned. The twinkle in his grey eyes made them shine like stars and made me feel more hopeful.

"How about Chinese for you boys? Mr. Liu's is right around the corner, my treat."

"Come now, Miles, you can do better than that", came a smooth, British-accented voice behind him. It was a curious accent, the speaker's native German accent bleeding through his British one here and there. "How about a trip to Salvatore's for you three? I'll treat if you'll give me a ride."

Salvatore's Trattoria was the swankiest restaurant in Lower Manhattan, open till one in the morning and serving the finest Italian wines. It was just the kind of place Lindevaldsen would suggest, knowing for certain that Miles couldn't afford it on his own.

"Thank you, Caleb", Miles answered in a measured, polite voice. "But the boys really aren't dressed for Salvatore's, and I can definitely feed them a lot more cheaply at Mr. Liu's. I wouldn't want to make you pay to satisfy the appetites of teenage boys."

"Of course, Miles. Another time, then."

"Sure, Caleb. Another time."

Neither of them meant it. Lindevaldsen swooshed his hair back with his free hand and brushed past Miles out of the courthouse. Miles exhaled and blinked rapidly a few times, biting his lip. He recovered quickly, though, and smiled at both of us again.

"Chinese sounds great", Alex piped up in the awkward silence. "Let Lindevaldsen waste his money on tiny portions of fancy food. We'll be full tonight, at least."

"Couldn't have said it better myself", Miles agreed, sounding more like himself. "On to Mr. Liu's."


	22. Chapter 22

"Why is Lindevaldsen such a jerk?" Alex asked, his face stuffed with egg roll. We were sitting at a booth in the back of Mr. Liu's, Alex and me on one side of the table and Miles on the other.

Miles snorted and took another spoonful of hot and sour soup.

"You might as well ask why Lindevaldsen is Lindevaldsen. Caleb thinks that he can use his wealth and sophistication to put me off the fact that the prosecution's case is basically hopeless. His delivery is wonderful, but his facts are nil."

"Hear, hear", Alex chorused, tapping the side of his Styrofoam cup with his plastic spoon. Instead of a celebratory twinkle, the sound he made more closely resembled a thud. He raised his glass high above his head. "To Miles and to victory!"

"To Miles and to victory", I repeated, holding up my own cup.

Miles waved us aside, but I could tell he was pleased. Then his cellphone rang, and he scowled at the screen.

"Sorry boys, but I've got to take this."

"Go ahead."

His expression cleared as soon as he heard the voice on the other end.

"Oh, hi, Anna. Yes, he's with me. No, it's no problem. Umm, I think so? I can put him on the line, if you want. No? Oh, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, definitely, I can do that for sure. You want me to pick something up for you? Oh, yum, that sounds great. No, I understand. Alright. Before midnight. Don't worry about it. See you."

"That was your mother", he explained to Alex. "You didn't call her before you left school for Camp Half-Blood?"

"No. Yikes. It slipped my mind. She'll kill me", he groaned.

"She'll have time to cool off", Miles assured him. "And besides, she seemed relieved to know you were with James and me."

"Yeah. For some reason, she thinks you guys are a good influence on me."

"Psshh. Couldn't imagine why."

"I'll drink to that", Alex replied, raising his cup again, and for a moment I was reminded of Lyra and how she had said the exact same thing at her apartment.

Miles stifled a yawn behind his fist and looked at us with bleary eyes.

"Well, I don't know about you two, but I'm about ready to call it a night. Let's pack up the leftovers and head back, shall we?"

He stood up in one quick, fluid motion and began to pack up the scanty remains of our Chinese feast. I was glad to see that, despite Alex's best efforts, there were still a few egg rolls left. No doubt they would find their way into my lunch the next day.

Outside, the sun had set and the first stars were just appearing. Alex walked with his head tilted upwards to the heavens, drinking in the few stars that could be seen over the light pollution of the city and lagging behind the two of us. Miles smiled at the sight of him and shook his head. He paused in the middle of the sidewalk to allow Alex to catch up with us.

"So what did you think of Camp Half-Blood?" he asked me quietly, out of Alex's hearing.

"It felt like home", I answered, and it seemed a pitifully inadequate statement for how the camp had made me feel. What with the constant moves every few weeks or months during my childhood, I had never had a place to call home before. I wondered if Camp Half-Blood could become that place for me now, even if I wasn't your typical demigod.

"Good. I'm glad", Miles nodded, his smile growing. "I was afraid it would be too much for you to take in all at once."

"It was. But in a good way."

"What was?" asked Alex, who had just caught up with us, and, as usual, was up in everyone else's business as soon as he was anywhere.

"I was just asking James what he thought of Camp Half-Blood", Miles explained patiently. Dealing with Alex for long periods of time called out all Miles' reserves of patience, but he seemed to enjoy it nevertheless.

"I wish we'd had the time to show him all the good parts of camp", Alex whined. "Like the Apollo cabin, for instance. Or the archery range. Or the pegasus stables."

"I've always liked the arts-and-crafts center myself", Miles chimed in. "That or the canoe lake. One of the few peaceful places at camp."

"Until the Ares cabin decides to stage their version of the Spanish Armada. Complete with Greek fire in torpedo form."

"Ouch. Yikes."

Miles shook his dark head disbelievingly.

"In my day, the Greek fire was classified as a strictly restricted weapon, reserved only for times of war."

"With the Ares cabin, when is it not a time of war?"

"True, true."

"And honestly, Miles, you're not old enough to talk about things 'in your day'."

"I'm almost forty-four, Alex."

"Really? You don't look it."

And he was right. Even in his current tired, disheveled state, Miles would have trouble passing for forty. When he was clean-shaven and neatly dressed, before he started growing his beard, his face dwarfed by thick, black-framed glasses, Miles could easily pass for thirty. 'It's the Italian in my blood', he would claim with a laugh. 'We just don't age'. People often thought he was my older brother instead of my father.

"I've been cursed with a baby face", Miles explained ruefully, although nothing of his even, angular features resembled a baby face, except for maybe the thick, curling lashes that fringed his heavy-lidded eyes. My aunt Sophia would often lament to me that Miles was blessed with eyelashes he didn't deserve, while her own stayed short and stubby no matter how much mascara she applied.

"Hey, you'll appreciate it someday", Alex assured him. "At least, that's what my mom always tells me."

If Alex played his cards right, he could pass for twelve pretty convincingly. His wild mop of blond curls and his lopsided dimples usually made people assume he was younger than sixteen. I had no such luck. I was tall and gangly, with sharp cheekbones and elbows, and people were always asking me if I was a student at Grantham College, the school that sponsored ours. It didn't exactly help that my resting face was perceived by most people as confrontational. Alex called it my 'go-ahead-make-my-day' face. It was useful for when I needed to walk through the streets of New York City late at night, since people tended to give me a wide berth, but it sure didn't do me any favors at school.

We turned aside at Alex's apartment complex.

"I'm good from here", he assured us. "I don't want to make you two walk up seven flights of stairs."

"Are you sure? I wouldn't mind at all", Miles answered, but I could tell he was glad to be spared all those stairs.

"Heck yeah. See you tomorrow, James."

"See you, man."


End file.
